Psychological Research

Descriptive and Inferential Statistics

Descriptive statistics is an style of analysis that is used when wanting to describe the entire population under study. But the population studied must be small enough to include every case, or each subject. ("Definition") On the other hand, inferential statistics also studies a population, but the purpose is to expand the results to include a much larger population in general. (Healey) In descriptive statistics, the results can be used to make conclusions about the population studied, and only that particular population. While inferential statistics allows a researcher to make conclusions about larger groups based on the results of the study of one particular group.

Descriptive statistics can be used when studying a population, such as one particular class in a school, or one group of workers, and the results are to be used to draw conclusions from only that group. For example, the...
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