Frequency
The simplest form of statistical analysis is to investigate one variable only. For example:
- How many of the respondents in the sample are women?
- How interested are the respondents in politics?
Questions like these could be investigated by creating frequency tables. Frequency is a method of describing how the cases are distributed over the different data values associated with a particular variable. The frequency table gives an overview of the number of cases associated with each of the values on a variable. Frequency tables are most suitable for variables with few data values, generally nominal or ordinal variables.
Read more about the use of weights
To create a frequency table, follow these steps:
- Open the Trust dataset
- Find the variable you are interested in, in the list in the left margin.
- Select the "Table" tab, left-click the variable and select "Add to row". This option will move the variable into the row of the table.
In Table 1 you can see how the respondents have answered the question "How interested are you in politics". Please note that the data are weighted according to the two weights. Based on the results, we can conclude that about 19 % of the population in the countries participating in the ESS survey are not at all interested in politics, while about 11% are very interested.
| Code | Frequency | % of all | % of valid | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 37,497.4 | 100.0 | 100.0 | |
| Very interested | 1 | 4,141.7 | 11.0 | 11.1 |
| Quite interested | 2 | 12,979.9 | 34.6 | 34.7 |
| Hardly interested | 3 | 13,121.9 | 35.0 | 35.1 |
| Not at all interested | 4 | 7,137.8 | 19.0 | 19.1 |
| Refusal | 7 | 17.0 | 0.0 | |
| Don't know | 8 | 92.5 | 0.2 | |
| No answer | 9 | 6.6 | 0.0 |
Weight is on