Standard deviation is an important measure of variability associated with continuous distributions. Standard deviation is calculated by taking the square root of the variance in a distribution. Standard deviations allow for better understanding of how far observations are away from the mean and how much overall variability exists in a distribution. Standard deviations also allow for the interpretation of individual observations in terms of their relationship to the mean.
1. The continuous data is entered into a column of a database.
2. Click Analyze.
3. Drag the cursor over the Descriptive Statistics drop-down menu.
4. Click on Descriptives.
5. Click on the continuous variable to highlight it.
6. Click on the arrow to move the outcome variable into the Variable(s): box.
7. Click OK.
2. Click Analyze.
3. Drag the cursor over the Descriptive Statistics drop-down menu.
4. Click on Descriptives.
5. Click on the continuous variable to highlight it.
6. Click on the arrow to move the outcome variable into the Variable(s): box.
7. Click OK.
1. In the Group Statistics table, look under the Std. Deviation column. This is the standard deviation value that is interpreted.
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