My motivation for writing Practical Statistics: A Quick and Easy Guide to SPSS, Stata, and other Statistical Software, published by SAGE Publications, came out of the difficulties that many students, including myself, had trying to learn to use statistical software programs. We didn’t lack the ability, but did lack a good set of guidelines for running analyses using programs like SPSS and Stata.
My book focuses on the practical use of statistics: it describes, in clear and simple terms, how to run statistical analyses using SPSS, Stata and other programs. It also incorporates statistical theory, describing when you should be using each statistical test.
Lessons
You will learn that statistics can be very simple to use yet extremely powerful, and with the knowledge contained in this book, you will be able to analyze everything from trends in the global economy to the spread of deadly disease.
The main focus of this book is to give readers the ability to quickly learn how to prepare data and run statistical analyses. While this book cannot be said to be comprehensive enough to make you an expert in statistical methods, it will give you a very good start, as well as give you the ability to run a number of advanced tests which can be particularly difficult to learn on your own.
Outline
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Statistics & Quantitative Methods
Chapter 2: An Introduction to SPSS and Stata
Chapter 3: Descriptive Statistics
Chapter 4: Pearson’s r, Chi-square, t-Test, and ANOVA
Chapter 5: Linear Regression
Chapter 6: Logistic, Ordered, Multinomial, Negative Binomial, and Poisson Regression
Chapter 7: Factor Analysis
Chapter 8: Time-Series Analysis
Chapter 9: Hierarchical Linear Modeling
Chapter 10: Structural Equation Modeling
Appendix A: Selecting the Appropriate Test
Appendix B: Tables of Significance
Appendix C: Additional Statistical Tests and Equations
