Observations

Observations

In research, observations—also called, cases, objects, or research units—are the entities that a study focuses on. They are the “things” about which data are collected and analyzed. Depending on the discipline and research question, observations may be individuals, groups, organizations, or other units of interest. For example, a psychologist might study people, an economist might study firms, and a sociologist might study families or households. In quantitative research, observations are often represented as rows in a data frame, with each row corresponding to one observation and each column representing a measured variable.

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