Which term describes the degree to which scores are spread out?

Which term describes the degree to which scores are spread out?

• A. Variability
• B. Range
• C. Deviation
• D. Sum of Squares (SS)

Answer: (A)

Variability describes how spread out scores are. It’s the broad notion of dispersion in a data set, so high variability means scores are widely scattered around the center and low variability means they cluster more tightly. Range only measures the gap between the highest and lowest value and misses how many intermediate values lie where; deviation is about how far an individual score is from the center, not the overall spread; Sum of Squares is a calculation that feeds into variance and standard deviation, not the descriptor of spread by itself. So the term that best describes the degree to which scores are spread out is variability.

Variability describes how spread out scores are. It’s the broad notion of dispersion in a data set, so high variability means scores are widely scattered around the center and low variability means they cluster more tightly. Range only measures the gap between the highest and lowest value and misses how many intermediate values lie where; deviation is about how far an individual score is from the center, not the overall spread; Sum of Squares is a calculation that feeds into variance and standard deviation, not the descriptor of spread by itself. So the term that best describes the degree to which scores are spread out is variability.