Descriptive statistics are exclusively used to describe the basic attributes of a distribution. For instance, they provide simple summaries that can be adopted to represent the distribution of a sample. The common descriptive analysis techniques include measures of central tendencies and simple graphics analysis. The choice of the technique to use depend with the nature of the data and the scale used to measure the variable in question. This paper focused on the descriptive analysis of the age and region of origin of the of the participants for the Afrobarometer survey.
Age of participants
Age is a quantitative continuous variable measured on a ratio scale. Therefore, it can be presented by all the measures of central tendency including the mean, mode, and median, as well as, measures of dispersion such as standard deviation and variance (Bryman, 2016). The mean age was 37.19 years ( SD = 14.594) with a media of 34.00 years and a mode of 30 years. Also, the variance was reported at 212.988 with a range of 87 years.
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Table 1 Descriptive Statistics of Age |
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| N | Valid |
51143 |
| Missing |
444 |
|
| Mean |
37.19 |
|
| Median |
34.00 |
|
| Mode |
30 |
|
| Std. Deviation |
14.594 |
|
| Variance |
212.988 |
|
| Range |
87 |
|
| Sum |
1902129 |
|
Table 1 Age of Participants
Region of the participants
The region of the country which the participants came from was a categorical variable measured on a nominal scale. Therefore, it can be presented by mode as a measure of central tendency and presented using the frequency tables (Neuman, 2013). It is clear that the mode of the distribution was 1 indicating that many of the participants came from West Africa. The frequency table presents the data grouped by the regions and respective numbers of the participants coming from these regions. 37.2% of the participants came from West Africa, 16.3% came from East Africa, 34.9% came from Southern Africa, and 11.6% came from North Africa. The frequency tables are effective data presentation tools that allows comparison of data as in the case below (Padgett, 2016).
| Table 2 Statistics | ||
| Country by region | ||
| N | Valid |
51587 |
| Missing |
0 |
|
| Mode |
1 |
|
|
Table 3 Country by region |
|||||
|
Frequency |
Percent |
Valid Percent |
Cumulative Percent |
||
| Valid | West Africa |
19196 |
37.2 |
37.2 |
37.2 |
| East Africa |
8399 |
16.3 |
16.3 |
53.5 |
|
| Southern Africa |
18003 |
34.9 |
34.9 |
88.4 |
|
| North Africa |
5989 |
11.6 |
11.6 |
100.0 |
|
| Total |
51587 |
100.0 |
100.0 |
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Table 2 Country by Region of the Participants
References
Neuman, W. L. (2013). Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches . Pearson education.
Bryman, A. (2016). Social research methods . Oxford university press.
Padgett, D. K. (2016). Qualitative methods in social work research (Vol. 36). Sage Publications.
