Frequency Tables Overview
Frequency or one-way tables represent the simplest method for analyzing categorical (nominal) data .
Purpose
They are often used as one of the exploratory procedures to review how different categories of values are distributed in the sample. For example, in a survey of spectator interest in different sports, we could summarize the respondents' interest in watching football in a frequency table as follows:
The table shows the number, proportion, and cumulative proportion of respondents who characterized their interest in watching football as either: (1) always interested, (2) usually interested, (3) sometimes interested, or (4) never interested. Of course, STATISTICA provides numerous graphics options in order to visualize the distribution of the data. For more information, see Frequency Tables dialog.
Arrangement of Data
Any variable in a data set can be analyzed and presented in frequency tables. In addition to tabulation by integer codes, you can also enter specific codes for the table, specify intervals for the frequency table, and even specify a set of (arbitrary) logical conditions which will assign specific cases to categories.
Applications
In practically every research project, a first "look" at the data usually includes frequency tables. For example, in survey research, frequency tables can show the number of males and females who participated in the survey, the number of respondents from particular ethnic and racial backgrounds, and so on. Responses on some labeled attitude measurement scales (e.g., interest in watching football) can also be nicely summarized via the frequency table. In medical research, one may tabulate the number of patients displaying specific symptoms; in industrial research one may tabulate the frequency of different causes leading to catastrophic failure of products during stress tests (e.g., which parts are actually responsible for the complete malfunction of television sets under extreme temperatures?). Customarily, if a data set includes any categorical data, then one of the first steps in the data analysis is to compute a frequency table for those categorical variables.