grouped frequency distribution
a description of how often a set of specific responses, organized into equal-sized subsets of possible responses, occur in a sample. It is a type of frequency distribution that is particularly useful when there are a large number of response choices (e.g., 10–20 or more) and researchers wish to present the information more concisely. For example, suppose that a researcher wants to summarize the individuals in a sample in which age ranges from 16 to 85 years. Instead of listing all 69 different ages, the researcher could combine the data into 5-year intervals, which would produce 14 subsets of ages (e.g., 16–20, 21–25, 26–30, … 81–85), thus reducing a large number of scores into smaller, more manageable groups.