Question

What are the possible applications in nursing of using the mean, median, and mode?

Answer 1

Mean,median and mode are the measures of Central tendency.These play vital role in nursing research activities.A researcher collects the value of any variable under study,like the blood sugar level and the observation values cluster around a central value.This is central tendency By measuring this central tendency we can categories the whole data obtained from samples. This helps in effective comparison between the groups and thus helps in faster interpretation of the study results.

Mean is obtained by dividing sum of values by total number of values.It measures the correct midpoint / average value of total numbers.It can be used to find the mean age of the population under study, average weight in a purticular age groupetc.It is used when the findings are within a comparable range .

Median is positional average.Here the observation is arranged in an order,either ascending or descending then the value which comes at exact midpoint is taken as the central value.Eg.FBS value of the samples

Mode is the point around which the observation values heavily concentrated/It is the value which has highest frequency in the data.Here the most repeated value will be taken as the central value.Eg.Number of meals per day in a group of 40 individuals

According to the study results and it's relation we can use any one of it to find the the central value with which we can interpret the study results.