What Is a Frequency Value in Basic Business Statistics?
A knowledge of basic business statistics can help small business owners make and assess their decisions with greater accuracy. Frequency value is a basic business statistics term used to describe a number of occurrences. Although you don't have to be a statistical wizard to be a good small business owner, you should understand what frequency value means, how it often is represented in reports and how it is used in business statistics.
Frequency is the number of times a value, value range or event occurs in gathered data. For example, if you conduct a survey of your employees to see how happy they are at their jobs, and five employees answer "very happy," the answer "very happy" has a frequency value of five. Similarly, if you are studying the age of your employees, and 40 of your employees are ages 25 to 30, the age range of 25 to 30 has a frequency value of 40. Frequency value can be expressed as a number or percent.
To determine the frequency value of a variable in your organization, you need to first collect and analyze data. One popular method of business data collection is the survey. You can survey employees, customers and even partners, such as distributors and vendors. After the surveys are complete, add up the numbers of marked responses. For example, in totaling responses from completed surveys, you might find that, for the first question, 10 people chose answer "A," 10 people chose "B" and 20 people chose "C." Thus, "A" and "B" each have frequency values of 10, while "C" has a frequency value of 20.
You also can determine frequency values from data that has been collected already. For example, you probably can determine the frequency value of employees ages 25 to 30 by pulling personnel files. Finally, sometimes frequency values are collected through simply observing or tracking the number of times an employee does something. For example, if you want to know how many times employees ask their supervisors clarification questions, have the supervisors keep track.
Preparing a Report
Most businessmen need to display the frequency values they collect in a business report or presentation. Because the purpose of finding frequency values often is to compare them, the values usually are displayed visually in a table or bar graph. For example, you can express frequency values in a table by listing the variables, such as response "A" from a survey, in one column and the frequency values in another. If you were displaying the frequency value of different age ranges in your company, you might list the age ranges in chronological order along the bottom of a bar graph and frequencies along the left-hand side. This would allow people to quickly see the largest and smallest groups by comparing the height of the bars.
Using the Information
Frequency values often help business owners implement and assess new programs or parts of their businesses. For example, knowing the age ranges of people in your business can help you determine whether you are going to have large numbers of employees retiring soon. Knowing how many customers rated your service as "excellent" can help you determine which of your stores is performing best.
Miranda Morley is an educator, business consultant and owner of a copywriting/social-media management company. Her work has been featured in the "Boston Literary Magazine," "Subversify Magazine" and "American Builder's Quarterly." Morley has a B.A. in English, political science and international relations. She is completing her M.A. in rhetoric and composition from Purdue University Calumet.