U - V

Click a term to expand its definition, or expand all definitions collapse all definitions

• unit of analysis

  What size or number is being counted as separate within a larger group in a study; for example, an individual person, a family, a city, or a school. This unit will be different for different studies.
  

• univariate analysis

  The study of only one thing that might change, not a group of different things that might each change.
  

• unstructured interview

  Also sometimes called in depth interviews or free story interviews. Unstructured interviews can be thought of as conversations with a purpose, though they are sometimes incorrectly regarded as vague chats.

   

• validity

  Validity concerns the extent to which your research findings can be said to be accurate and reliable, and the extent to which the conclusions are warranted.
  

• variable

  Any factor which may be relevant to a research study. In a survey, for example, you may choose to analyze data by the age and gender of respondents, in which case 'age' and 'gender' are variables.

• variance

  The measure of how wide the range of values (amounts, sizes, or scores written in numbers) is; how far apart these numbers are. It is a number found by multiplying the “standard deviation” by itself.