This study investigated the conceptual understanding of measures of spread among community college students in an introductory statistics course. The course is centered around deemphasizing computational skills and focused, rather, on development of conceptual understanding. Open-ended questions were developed to explore and assess students' conceptual understanding of measures of spread. A detailed analysis of the students' responses is presented to reveal the range of students' conceptions of the measures of spread. The analysis of a wide variety of responses provides evidence of the students' ability to organize concepts of spread in a way that is meaningful to them individually. Some common student misconceptions revealed by this study should be examined closely and taken into consideration to promote students' development of understanding of spread. (Contains 7 tables.)