Sociology Definition Of The Week: Mode

The mode is the category or score with the highest frequency in the distribution. In other words, it is the most common score, or the score that appears the highest number of times in a distribution. Some distributions do not have a mode at all. That is, each category has the same frequency. Other distributions might have more than one mode. For example, when a distribution has two scores or categories with the same highest frequency, it is often referred to as "bimodal." The mode is the only measure of central tendency that can be used with nominal variables.