Wiley, 2013. — 560 p. — ISBN 978-1-118-23415-0
A core statistics text that emphasizes logical inquiry, not math.
Basic Statistics for Social Research teaches core general statistical concepts and methods that all social science majors must master to understand (and do) social research. Its use of mathematics and theory are deliberately limited, as the authors focus on the use of concepts and tools of statistics in the analysis of social science data, rather than on the mathematical and computational aspects. Research questions and applications are taken from a wide variety of subfields in sociology, and each chapter is organized around one or more general ideas that are explained at its beginning and then applied in increasing detail in the body of the text.
Each chapter contains instructive features to aid students in understanding and mastering the various statistical approaches presented in the book, including:
Learning objectives
Check quizzes after many sections and an answer key at the end of the chapter
Summary
Key terms
End-of-chapter exercises
SPSS exercises (in select chapters)
Ancillary materials for both the student and the instructor are available and include a test bank for instructors and downloadable video tutorials for students.
Univariate descriptionUsing Statistics
Displaying One Distribution
Central Tendency
Dispersion
Describing the Shape of a Distribution
The Normal Distribution
Inference and hypothesis testingBasic Ideas of Statistical Inference
Hypothesis Testing for One Sample
Hypothesis Testing for Two Samples
Multiple Sample Tests of Proportions: Chi-Squared
Multiple Sample Tests for Means: One-Way ANOVA
Association and predictionAssociation with Categorical Variables
Association of Interval/Ratio Variables
Chapter 14 Regression Analysis
Logistic Regression Analysis