A frequency distribution consists of a description of the
number of subjects selecting each possible option and may
include the percentage of the sample that this number represents.
For example, a frequency distribution for gender would
describe how many men and how many women were in the
sample. A frequency distribution can be shown using
numeric values or using graphical techniques (Table 2 and
Figure 1). Frequency distributions are often univariate (one
variable only) but may be bivariate (including two variables).
A bivariate frequency distribution is often presented as a table
with the name and values of one variable across the top and
the name and values of the second variable down the left side.
Table 3 is an example of a bivariate frequency distribution.
Multivariate frequency distributions describing more than
two variables at one time are possible but become more complex
and are beyond the scope of this article.