Hi all, new user here hoping to become part of the community,
I have recently purchased a book reccommended to me - Discovering statistics using SPSS (Field, 2013) with a view to knuckling down on statistical analysis of my data that i have collected for a Master's project.
I have various sets of data on the basic chemistry of water (e.g. pH, temperature, conductivity) and levels of some contaminants in the water (given in mg/l). I want to look at the impact that vegetation cover of a streams catchment has upon the quality of water in the stream.
I have used GIS to obtain data on both the soil type, vegetation type and underlying geology, and i would like to see whether these have any relationship with the levels of contaminants recorded. However one of the major issues that i see is that the data obtained on vegetation, soil, geology etc is not numerical, i.e. geology of stream a1 is granite, vegetation of stream ce2 is primarily blanket bog etc.
How would i turn this data into numerical data? What types of data do i have (e.g. ratio, continuous, etc) and what tests are the best to test for relationships between these two data sets?
Any help is greatly appreciated
Serth
I have recently purchased a book reccommended to me - Discovering statistics using SPSS (Field, 2013) with a view to knuckling down on statistical analysis of my data that i have collected for a Master's project.
I have various sets of data on the basic chemistry of water (e.g. pH, temperature, conductivity) and levels of some contaminants in the water (given in mg/l). I want to look at the impact that vegetation cover of a streams catchment has upon the quality of water in the stream.
I have used GIS to obtain data on both the soil type, vegetation type and underlying geology, and i would like to see whether these have any relationship with the levels of contaminants recorded. However one of the major issues that i see is that the data obtained on vegetation, soil, geology etc is not numerical, i.e. geology of stream a1 is granite, vegetation of stream ce2 is primarily blanket bog etc.
How would i turn this data into numerical data? What types of data do i have (e.g. ratio, continuous, etc) and what tests are the best to test for relationships between these two data sets?
Any help is greatly appreciated
Serth