I need to publish an article in APA 7. The reviewer says not to se the words "Mode, Skewness and Kurtosis" in tables, but to use symbols instead. I cannot fond these symbols.
Dear Natela
I think the two link below should be useful:
https://users.sussex.ac.uk/~grahamh/RM1web/APA%20format%20for%20statistical%20notation%20and%20other%20things.pdf
http://www.bryanburnham.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Reporting-Statistics-in-APA-Format1.pdf
All the best
Zahra
kurtosis. (Symbol β2 or α4 .) A measure of the heaviness (remoteness and mass) of the tails of a probability distribution. It is defined as. where μ4 is the fourth ( statistical) moment about the mean and σ2 the variance. For the normal distribution, β2 = 3; cases for which β2 > 3 indicate distributions that are more outlier-prone (i.e., have heavier tails) than the normal (Gaussian) distribution, while those for which β2 < 3 indicate distributions that are less outlier-prone than the ...
Mode is the value in a data set that has the highest number of recurrences. It is possible for a data set to be bimodal & multimodal, which has two modes & more than two modes. (Symbol for mode is 'Mo') In some places it states that no symbol for mode exists.
Skewness. Was so far unable to find symbol.
Good luck.
Up to date skewness and kurtosis are not defined by the APA. In mathematics and statistics, symbols b1 to b4 are reserved for skewness coefficients (depending on the formula for calculating the coefficient). For kurtosis, it is usually the Greek letter K (kappa). See: Groeneveld, R. A., & Meeden, G. (1984). Measuring skewness and kurtosis. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series D (The Statistician), 33(4), 391-399. With regard to APA, this raises problems because the b coefficients are reserved for regression and structural models, and K for Cohen's coefficient of concordance.
In addition, it is not clear which formula is used to calculate both coefficients by subsequent statistical programs, because technical documentation is not for everything. This means that you do not know exactly which result you are reporting, and therefore which symbol you should use.
The publishing practice (journal scientific articles, dissertations) is that the measures of skewness and kurtosis are redundant (and really controversial in interpretation), because either the result of the normal distribution test (for most "standard" analyzes You report statistical significance of a normality of distribution test such as the Saphiro-Wilk test) or the result of the multivariate normal distribution in the form of CR (crtitical ratio) is reported. The rest is completely redundant, so the APA does not define it. So it seems suspicious that you need to report such a result. Are you sure the reviewer knows what he/she is doing?
So in practice, use any abbreviation (eg Skew, Kurt) and describe it in the table notes. This will follow the APA mechanics and not contradict the APA symbols rules.
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