5. Descriptive Statistics

We first provide an overview of market research’s workflow. We then discuss efficient strategies to help you structure your project’s database, as well as enter, clean, and easily check the collected data for inconsistencies. In addition, we provide easy strategies that allow you to handle missing data observations before we describe the most common and useful univariate and bivariate descriptive graphs and statistics. Thereafter, we take you through the basics of Stata, including its toolbar and shortcuts to frequently used commands, and provide useful tips on how to create and interpret descriptive graphs and table outputs. A range of descriptive statistics is illustrated and applied in Stata, including bar charts, histograms, box plots, pie charts, frequency tables, scatter graphs, crosstabs, and correlation tables, all of which are useful for differently scaled variables. We make use of a case study for an easy and meaningful interpretation of the graphs and table outputs. We conclude with recommendations for further readings and a case study with review questions.