Click on the following links. Please note these will open in a new window.

Video Resource

Video 1: Understanding the Standard Deviation

Learning Objective: 5-2: How to describe your sample using descriptive statistics.

Description: Explanation and visualization of the standard deviation

Web Resources

Example Reports (see links below)

Learning Objective: 5-2: How to describe your sample using descriptive statistics. | 5-3: The appropriate statistics and graphs based on the type of data you have.

Description: Links to a variety of descriptive studies examining prevalence and trends.

Examples Discussed in Chapters 4 and 5

Pew Research Center. Reports and statistics from a variety of public opinion polls and other studies examining a variety of issues affecting American life. www.pewresearch.org/data/

National Longitudinal Study of Youth. Reports and statistics from an ongoing study of American Youth. www.bls.gov/nls/

U.S. Census Bureau. Census data and results from the U.S. Government. www.census.gov

Additional Examples of Descriptive Research

United States

General Interest

• The Gallup Organization: www.gallup.com
• General Social Survey: http://www3.norc.org/GSS+Website/
• National Opinion Research Center: www.norc.uchicago.edu;
• New York Times Opinion Polls: www.nytimes.com/ref/us/polls_index.html;
• The Roper Center: www.ropercenter.uconn.edu

Children and Youth

• Monitoring the Future: http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/

Crime Statistics

• Department of Justice: www.usdoj.gov/
• Federal Bureau of Investigation: www.fbi.gov/

Health

• National Center for Health Statistics: www.cdc.gov/nchs

Income and Labor

• Internal Revenue Service: http://irs.gov/
• Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://stats.bls.gov/

International

• International Social Survey Program: www.issp.org/
• Population Reference Bureau: www.prb.org
• United Nations: www.un.org

Data sets

Practice calculating descriptive statistics with a data analysis program. Use any of the data sets available on the “Datasets” tab.