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Social Research Methods

Chapter 15: Quantitative data
analysis

© Alan Bryman, 2016. All rights reserved.

 Introduction

• Think about data analysis at an early

stage in the research process
• Decisions about methods and sample
size affect the kind of analysis you are
able to do

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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 Types of variable

• Interval/ratio
– regular distances between all categories in range
• Ordinal
– categories can be ranked, but unequal distances between
them
• Nominal
– qualitatively different categories - cannot be ranked
• Dichotomous
– only two categories (e.g. gender)

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 Deciding how to categorize a variable

Figure 15.1
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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 Univariate analysis
(analysis of one variable at a time)

• Frequency tables
– Number of people or cases in each category
– Often expressed as percentages of sample
– Interval/ratio data needs to be grouped
• Diagrams
– Bar chart or pie chart (nominal or ordinal
variables)
– Histogram (interval/ratio variables)

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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 A bar chart (gym study)

Figure 15.2
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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 A pie chart

Figure 15.3
Main reasons for visiting the gym Page 337

Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 A histogram

Figure 15.4
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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 Measures of central tendency

• Mean
– Sum all values in distribution, then divide by total
number of values
• Median
– Middle point within entire range of values
– Not distorted by outliers
• Mode
– Most frequently occurring value
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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 Measures of dispersion

Dispersion is the amount of variation in a sample

Measures of dispersion compare levels of variation in
different samples to see if there is more variability in
one sample’s variable than in another sample

The range is the difference between the minimum and

maximum values in a sample
The standard deviation is the average amount of
variation around the mean, reducing the impact of
extreme values (outliers)
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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 Bivariate analysis
(analysis of two variables at a time)

• Explores relationships between variables

• Searches for co-variance and correlations
• Cannot establish causality
• Can sometimes infer the direction of a causal
relationship
– If one variable is obviously independent of the other
• Contingency tables
– Connects the frequencies of two variables
– Helps you identify any patterns of association

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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 Pearson’s r : relationship between two
interval/ratio variables
• Coefficient shows the strength and direction of the
relationship
– Lies between -1 (perfect negative relationship) and +1
(perfect positive relationship)
• Relationships must be linear for the method to work,
so, plot a scatter diagram first
• Coefficient of determination
– Found by squaring the value of r
– Shows how much of the variation in one variable is due to
the other variable?

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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 Analysing the relationships between
other, or mixed types of, variables

Spearman’s rho: for the relationship between two ordinal variables,

or one ordinal and one interval/ratio variable (values of -1 to +1)
Phi coefficient: for the relationship between two dichotomous
variables (values of -1 to +1)
Cramer’s V: for the relationship between two nominal variables, or
one nominal and one ordinal variable (values between 0 and 1)
Comparing means: when a nominal variable is identified as the
independent variable, the means of the interval/ratio variable are
compared for each sub-group of the nominal variable
eta: for the level of association between different types of variables,
even when there is no linear relationship between them
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344

Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 Multivariate analysis
(three or more variables)

• The relationship between two variables might be

spurious
– Each variable could be related to a separate, third variable
• There might be an intervening variable
• A third variable might be moderating the
relationship
– e.g. correlation between age and exercise could be
moderated by gender

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 Example of a spurious relationship

Figure 15.11
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 Statistical significance

• How confident can we be that the findings from a

sample can be generalised to the population as a
whole?
• How risky is it to make this inference?
• Only applies to probability samples

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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 Testing procedure for statistical
significance
1. Set up a null hypothesis - suggesting no
relationship between examined variables in the
population from which the sample was drawn
2. Decide on an acceptable level of statistical
significance
3. Use a statistical test
4. If acceptable level attained
-reject null hypothesis
If acceptable level not attained
-accept it
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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 …but we might be wrong to accept or
reject the null hypothesis

Type I and Type II errors

Figure 15.12
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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 Tests of statistical significance

• The chi-square test

– establishes how confident we can be that there is a
relationship between the two variables in the population

• Correlation and statistical significance

– provides information about the likelihood that the coefficient
will be found in the population from which the sample was
taken

• Comparing means and statistical significance – the F statistic

– expresses the amount of explained variance in relation to
the amount of error variance
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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 The chi-square test

•The chi-square (2) test is applied to contingency tables. It

establishes how confident we can be that there is a relationship
between the two variables in the population. The test calculates, for
each cell in the table, an expected frequency or value - one that
would occur on the basis of chance alone. The chi-square value is
determined by calculating the differences between the actual and
expected values for each cell and then summing those differences.

•Whether a chi-square value achieves statistical significance

depends not just on its magnitude, but also on the number of
categories of the two variables being analysed. This latter issue is
governed by what is known as the ‘degrees of freedom’
associated with the table.
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 Correlation and significance

• How confident can we be about a relationship

between two variables?
• Whether a correlation coefficient is statistically
significant depends on:
– the size of the coefficient (the higher the better)
– the size of the sample (the larger the better)
• e.g. if coefficient is 0.62 and p<0.05, we can reject
the null hypothesis

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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition

 Comparing means

• Statistical significance of relationship between

two variables means
• Total variation in dependent variable:
– error variance (variation within subgroups of IV)
– explained variance (variation between subgroups of IV)
• F statistic
– expresses amount of explained variance in relation to
amount of error variance

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Bryman: Social Research Methods, 5th edition