You have a unimodal symmetrical distribution of scores for people's attitudes toward more punitive sentences for firsttime drug offenders. Which measure of central tendency are you likely to use for the purpose of characterizing these scores

Mean

Explanation:

Measures of central tendency is a statistical term that describes the various methods in getting the central values in a population. There are three different measures of central tendency, which are:

1. Mean: the average score

2. Median: the middle score in a sequence of scores in ranked order

3. Mode: the most frequent score

However, depending on the shape of a distribution, any of the measures can be most preferred to others due to their accuracy. For example, in symmetrical, unimodal datasets, the mean is the most accurate measure of central tendency. While in the case of asymmetrical (skewed), unimodal datasets, the median is likely to be more accurate. Also, in a bimodal distributions, the most accurate measure of central tendency the mode.

Hence, in this case, the correct answer is MEAN.