Discussion: Displaying Data
Visual displays of data provide you and anyone else with a graphical display of what is often a complex array of quantitative data. A key strength of visualization is the ability to quickly enlighten you with key data. Rather than solely relying on your audience to interpret numerical values and statistics explained in a narrative, a visual display can easily illustrate descriptions, relationships, and trends. Although the focus is on simplicity, the researcher has an obligation to present these graphical displays in a clear and meaningful way. For this Discussion, you will explore ways to appropriately display data. To prepare for this Discussion:- Review the Learning Resources for this week related to frequency distributions and graphic displays of data.
- Using the SPSS software, open the General Social Survey dataset found in this week’s Learning Resources.
- Next, create a figure or table from a few selected variables within the dataset.
- Finally, think about what is good about how the data are displayed in the figure or table you created and what is not so good.