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Running head: Introduction to Quantitative Analysis: Descriptive Analysis 1

Introduction to Quantitative Analysis: Descriptive Analysis 6

Introduction to Quantitative Analysis: Descriptive Analysis

Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive statistics gives a quick overview of the study's variables at hand (Kaur et al., 2018). In this study, descriptive statistics are determined for a numerical and a categorical variable, which aids in drawing differences between the suitable statistics reported in both.

The Afrobarometer dataset was used for this study, and two variables were chosen as required by the study. Level of democracy: today (Q46a) was used as the quantitative variable reporting the score from the participants on democracy and people must obey the law (Q48b) was used as the qualitative variable with 5 levels, that is, 1) strongly disagree, 2) disagree, 3) neither agree nor disagree, 4) agree and 5) strongly agree.

The mean ages of participants were reported, as shown in table 1. The table shows that the mean of the ages of participants was 37.39.

Table 1: Ages descriptive statistics

Descriptive Statistics
	N	Mean	Std. Deviation
Q1. Age	10232	37.39	14.863
Valid N (listwise)	10232

For the quantitative variable, the descriptive analysis appropriate includes the mean, median, and mode for the central tendency and standard deviation to measure variation. These statistics are reported for the level of democracy scores, which was our quantitative variable. Table 2 shows the output of the results (Warner, 2020).

Table 2: Descriptive statistics for quantitative variable

Statistics
Q46a. Level of democracy: today
N	Valid	9395
	Missing	922
Mean	5.54
Median	5.00
Mode	5
Std. Deviation	2.871

According to the analysis, the mean for the level of democracy today was 5.54, median was 5.00, and the mode was 5. The total sample was N = 9395. The most appropriate measure of central tendency used in this case is the median since the mean is slightly greater than the median and mode, which implies a positively skewed distribution.

The standard deviation for the level of democracy today was SD = 2.87. This implies that the scores are approximately 3 points deviations from the mean. It shows that the values are moderately dispersed from the true mean.

Descriptive statistics from a qualitative variable can be reported in a frequency distribution table that shows the different categories of the variable. In this study, people must obey the law (Q48b) was examined and the results were as shown in table 3.

Table 3: Frequency distribution for people must obey the law (Q48b)

Q48b. People Must Obey The Law
	Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid	Strongly Disagree	495	4.8	4.9	4.9
	Disagree	990	9.6	9.8	14.6
	Neither Agree Nor Disagree	566	5.5	5.6	20.2
	Agree	4780	46.3	47.1	67.4
	Strongly Agree	3311	32.1	32.6	100.0
	Total	10142	98.3	100.0
Missing	Missing	2	.0
	Don't know	173	1.7
	Total	175	1.7
Total	10317	100.0

The frequency distribution table shows that the highest count was for the participants who agreed that people must obey the law (4780), which was about 47.1% of the valid sample. The second-highest category was for the people who strongly agreed that people must obey the law (3311), constituting 32.6% of the proper sample. Those who disagreed (990), neither agreed nor differed (566), and those who strongly disagreed that people must obey the law (495) constituted 9.8%, 5.6%, and 4.9% of the total valid number of participants, respectively.

The range can be calculated for the categories by subtracting the least counts from the highest counts, which was (4780 – 495 = 4,287). This is a high range, which may indicate many variations of frequencies of the categories.

Descriptive statistics can easily give a person the required information required to make decisions. In this study, a researcher can quickly determine the levels of democracy scores are average. Each country should work towards creating a democratic nation that will increase the citizens' satisfaction. People agreed to obey the law. However, some individuals still do not agree on obeying the law, which calls for law implementation strategies to ensure that few criminal cases are met.

Reference:

Kaur, P., Stoltzfus, J., & Yellapu, V. (2018). Descriptive statistics. International Journal of Academic Medicine, 4(1), 60.

Warner, R. M. (2020). Applied Statistics I: Basic Bivariate Techniques. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.