ABSTRACT
Researchers can examine a relationship between two nominal variables by conducting a bivariate analysis. Perhaps a researcher wants to know whether there is a relationship between teachers' genders and their preferences for candidates. For instance, suppose a researcher asked each member of a population of 540 teachers which candidate he or she prefers for a school board vacancy and found that 258 preferred Smith and 282 preferred Jones. The 258 and 282 are frequencies, whose symbol is f. The researcher is analyzing how participants vary on only one variable. Researchers also may refer to them as numbers of cases, whose symbol is N. Teachers' genders are predictive of their preferences. In this population of teachers, there are many more female teachers than male teachers. When this is the case, examining only the numbers of cases can be misleading. In academic writing, some researchers report proportions instead of percentages.
