Frequency distributions
A frequency distribution enables you to inspect the contents of a field of columns containing alphabetic or numeric data. For example, in a shopping survey the price the respondent paid for a bottle of mineral water might be stored in columns 112 to 114. A frequency distribution tells you how many respondents bought mineral water at a particular price. This is useful for determining how the values in these fields should be grouped for tabulation, as well as for rough estimates of medians.
By default, each distribution has two parts. In the first part, the values in the column field are sorted in alphabetic or numeric order; in the second, they are sorted in rank order, according to the number of times each one occurs in the data. Any multicodes in the field are decoded and the constituent codes are listed. Each distribution shows both absolute and cumulative figures as well as percentages for both. At the end of the alphabetic sort, Quantum prints:
▪the number of categories (that is, different values) found
▪the number of numeric items found
▪the sum of factors; that is, the sum of all wholly numeric items (values which occur more than once are counted as many times as they occur)
▪the mean for the numeric items listed (that is, the sum of factors divided by the number of numeric items)
▪standard deviation for the numeric values listed.
If the field is numeric and the run has missing values processing switched on, fields that are non-numeric will contain the value missing_. This value is counted as zero by the sum of factors, mean and standard deviation lines of the report.
Statements are provided for requesting a frequency distribution sorted in alphabetic or numeric order only.
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