Under certain special circumstances, regardless of the medint specified, Quantum reports the percentile as exactly halfway between the value at the percentile mark and the next value.

This only happens when either there is an even number of respondents and no other respondent gave the same response as the percentile respondent, or more than one respondent gave the same response and the percentile respondent was the last one to give that response. You can tell when this happens because the cumulative value in the frequency distribution is exactly at the percentile mark.

To illustrate this, the example table has been altered so that there are now five respondents in the ‘Value is 2’ element and four in the ‘Value is 3’ element:

The tenth, median, respondent is now the last respondent who gave the value 2, so in the frequency distribution the cumulative value is exactly 50%. Regardless of the medint specified, Quantum reports the median as the value that is exactly halfway between the value at 50% and the next value; that is halfway between 2 and 3, that is 2.5.