Unit of Analysis

Updated 17 Sep 2026

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What it is
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  the entity about which a study intends to draw conclusions
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Examples
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  a person, organization, transaction, recording, document, or software system
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Distinguish from
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  the unit of observation is what is directly measured; several observations may belong to one unit of analysis
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Example
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  thousands of frames from ten videos are not thousands of independent videos
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  repeated measurements from one participant do not create additional independent participants
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Implication
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  sampling, data splitting, statistical analysis, and claims must account for dependence among observations
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Related
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  Sampling (Statistics)
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  Dataset Splitting

Linked references 3