B.A. (Prog.

) Sem IV
Statistical Methods and Psychological Testing
UNIT I

Long answer questions

1. What is statistics? Discuss the relevance of statistics in psychology.

2. The subject of statistics is often divided into two parts: descriptive and inferential.
Briefly describe each.

3. What is statistics? Explain the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics.

4. What is measurement? Can all numbers be treated alike in the process of measurement?
Explain.

5. What do you understand by ‘scales of measurement’? Using suitable examples, describe

the various scales of measurement.

6. Describe any four ways in which frequency distributions can be graphically

represented.

7. What are the advantages of graphically representing a frequency distribution? Using

suitable examples, discuss the conditions under which a frequency polygon would be
better than a histogram to represent quantitative data.

8. What is a histogram? Examine its similarities and differences with a frequency polygon.

9. What are the various ways in which a frequency distribution may be graphically
represented? Explain the difference between histogram and frequency polygon.

10. Can graphical representations be misleading? Discuss the factors that affect the
shape of graphs.

Short answer questions

1. Define a population and a sample. Also explain the difference between a parameter and
a statistic.
2. A school psychologist determines the IQ score for every student in her school. The
school nurse measures the current height of every student. Are the two studying the
same population? Explain.
3. Reema obtained a score of 40 on a reading ability test and Seema a score of 20. Can we
say that Reema is twice as good as Seema in reading ability? Explain.
4. Ramya obtained a score of 0 on a test of creativity. Can we say that Ramya doesn’t have
any creative ability? Explain.
5. What level of measurement is most often achieved (a) in the physical sciences and (b) in
the behavioral sciences and education?
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6. A score of 0 on an achievement test does not necessarily mean that the individual
knows nothing about the subject. Explain.
7. We are interested in the IQ scores of students at our college. We randomly test 10% of
them and calculate the mean IQ score. What is the population? What is the sample?
What is the statistic? What is the parameter? What kind of variable is being measured?
8. A psychologist wants to study a small population of 40 students in a local private school.
If the researcher was interested in selecting the entire population of students for this
study, then how many students must the psychologist include?
9. What is the main distinction between variables on an interval and ratio scale of
measurement?
10. A researcher measured behavior among all individuals in some small population. Are
inferential statistics necessary to draw conclusions concerning this population?
Explain.

11. Identify the following as either descriptive or inferential statistics.

a) The average Amazon.com rating of the book Statistical Reasoning in the
Behavioral Sciences by 26 reviewers is 4.6 on a scale of 1 to 5.
b) The average Indian viewer watches 151 hours of TV per month.

12. Give the level of measurement for each of the following variables:
a) ethnic group to which a person belongs
b) number of times a mouse makes a wrong turn in a laboratory maze
c) position one finishes in a race
d) a person’s score on a standard IQ test
e) a person’s place on a waiting list
f) a person’s weight
g) kind of food a person prefers the most
h) distance traveled by a car

13. For each of the following class intervals, state over which point on the abscissa, you
would place the left side of the bar and over what point the right side of the bar, for
making a histogram:
(a) 57-60 (b) 80-89 (c) 93-95

14. In making a frequency polygon, state over what point the dot would go, for each of the
following class intervals:
(a) 120-139 (b) 95-98 (c) 78-80

15. What graph is particularly helpful when comparing two or more distributions of a
quantitative variable?

16. What graph is particularly helpful when comparing two or more distributions of a
qualitative variable?

17. Name the graphical representations that can be used for nominal data.

18. Why do we leave space in between the rectangles while constructing a bar diagram?
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 19. Draw a rough sketch for each of the following distributions (a) bimodal (b) multimodal
(c) skewed to the right (d) skewed to the left (e) symmetrical (f) rectangular (g)
platykurtic (f) leptokurtic.

20. If a test was generally very easy, except for a few students who had very low scores,
then the distribution of scores would be ______________________(positively skewed/
negatively skewed/ platykurtic/ leptokurtic.

Numerical Questions

1. Construct a histogram and a frequency polygon for the following data:

Scores f
150-154 2
145-149 4
140-144 7
135-139 12
130-134 14
125-129 25
120-124 23
115-119 18
110-114 20
105-109 12
100-104 8
95-99 3
90-94 2
n=150

2. Researchers asked 208 students to name the closest person in their life. Given below is
the obtained data in the form of a frequency table. Construct a bar diagram for the data.

Closest Person f
Romantic partner 92
Non-romantic partner 76
Family member 33
Other 7

3. In a university, male psychology majors are distributed as follows: 24 freshmen,

61 sophomores, 109 juniors, 104 seniors, and 92 graduate students.
Comparable figures for females are 74, 58, 99, 53, and 67, respectively. Construct
a bar diagram suitable for comparing the sexes.

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4. Construct a histogram and a frequency polygon for the following data of scores
obtained by students on a 100-marks mid-term examination.

Scores f
96-98 1
93-95 1
90-92 3
87-89 3
84-86 4
81-83 7
78-80 8
75-77 9
72-74 12
69-71 6
66-68 11
63-65 7
60-62 2
57-59 3
54-56 3
N=80

5. Plot relative frequency polygons on the same graph to compare the following data: