Applying Statistical Concepts to Cognitive Assessment

Applying Statistical Concepts to Cognitive Assessment

Introduction

The cognitive assessments in psychology at the research level require statistical tools for the analysis of patients. There are various statistical tools used by the researcher for the assessment and those tools when combined give results in the favor or against of any study. This study includes 3 cases of psychological disorders for the cognitive analysis will be done. The disorders are borderline personality disorder, panic disorder and clinical depression. The remedial measures have been analyzed in this study through qualitative data and then converting that data into meaningful quantitative form.

Discussion

Data collection and data transforming techniques

The data collected in this study is certainly qualitative i.e. gathered through questionnaires. Therefore, to covert the raw data in to meaningful statistical form, likert-scales are used. For e.g. the qualitative answers convert the feelings of the patients are given nominal numbers (Courts, 1966). Another way used to collect data in this study is the attitudinal forced questions technique, in which the patients or respondents are forced to answer every question by giving such techniques of agreeing or disagreeing so that the respondent do not left the answer bank. An example of likert-scale is given below:

Measures of variability and how they help in cognitive assessment

The standard deviation, range and inter-quartile range are the tools which indicate the amount of variation within the dataset. The simplest measure of variability is the range that is most easy to calculate but can certainly be ambiguous if the data contain outliers. Another tool that reduces this problem of outliers is inter-quartile range i.e. by considering the variation within the dataset from the middle 50%. The standard deviation is considered as the most reliable measure of variability as it takes care of how each value in the data varies equally ...