Understanding Social Statistics

A Student's Guide to Navigating the Maze

Lance W. Roberts, Jason Edgerton, Tracey Peter, and Lori Wilkinson

Integrated computer software guidance. One of the 5 steps in the 5-step learning approach includes instruction in using computer software. Often relegated to an appendix in statistics text, Roberts et al. offer guidance and support in using applications like SPSS directly in the narrative, as part of the learning process.
Familiar contexts. Understanding Social Statistics puts the core concepts and techniques of statistics into familiar and non-threatening contexts via examples and sample problems, making the challenge of learning to calculate and interpret data easier.
Proven 5-step learning approach. Used, honed, and perfected by the authors over semesters of use in their own statistics courses, this learning method provides a predictable structure to each chapter and is a proven approach to student engagement and success with the basics of statistics.
Emphasis on how statistics "works." Practice problems and exercises encourage students to learn the hand calculations as well as the steps in using computer software to analyze and interpret data to ensure they understand the fundamentals of concepts instead of memorizing by rote.
Conversational narrative. An accessible, easy-to-understand, and uncomplicated writing style furthers the text's aim to be a practical and effective tool for helping students overcome their fears about studying statistics.

Understanding Social Statistics

A Student's Guide to Navigating the Maze

Lance W. Roberts, Jason Edgerton, Tracey Peter, and Lori Wilkinson

Description

Students studying statistics for the first time can often feel confused, disoriented, and lacking direction. Understanding Social Statistics is a text crafted with this reality in mind, that many students feel lost and frustrated when studying statistics-much like being in a maze.

USS acts as both a map and toolkit for navigating the maze of social statistics successfully. At every point in each chapter, students will have a clear idea of where they are and in which direction they are headed. A 5-step learning model applied to each theoretical concept ensures that readers have a predictable and reliable method for approaching every statistical situation they encounter-by working their way through the 5 steps, readers are guaranteed a way forward. Along the way they will collect all the tools they need to perform statistical analysis and learn to use them competently.

Using maps and tools effectively requires practice, which is another key element of USS.

Steps 2 (Learning the Calculations) and 3 (Using Computer Software) in the 5-step learning model provide ample opportunity for students to put learning into practice with sample problems and exercises. In addition, a complement of supportive text pedagogy and ancillary material (including detailed descriptions of the steps involved in arriving at the answers to the text's practice and sample problems) underscore the authors' commitment to providing a practical, easy-to-understand, and effective way to learn social statistics.

Understanding Social Statistics

A Student's Guide to Navigating the Maze

Lance W. Roberts, Jason Edgerton, Tracey Peter, and Lori Wilkinson

c Brief Contents
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part I: General Orientation
1:The Location and Limits of Quantitative Analysis
2:The Logic of Social Statistics
3:Calculations and Computers
Part II: Univariate Analysis
4:Introducing Univariate Analysis
5:Measures of Central Tendency
6:Measures of Dispersion
7:Charts and Graphs
8:The Normal Curve
Part III: Bivariate Analysis
9:Understanding Relationships
10:Bivariate Tables
11:Scatterplot Analysis
12:Proportional Reduction in Error Statistics
13:Statistics for Categorical Relationships
14:Statistics for Continuous Connections
Part IV: Multivariate Analysis
15:Taking Additional Variables into Account
16:The Elaboration Model
17:Multiple Regression
Part V: Sampling and Inference
18:Samples and Populations
19:Point Estimates, Confidence Intervals, and Confidence Levels
20:Hypothesis Testing
21:Various Significance Tests
Epilogue: A Few Final Words
Appendix A: Chi-Square Table
Appendix B: The Student's t-Table
Appendix C: Areas under the Normal Curve
Answer Key
Glossary
Notes
References
Index

Understanding Social Statistics

A Student's Guide to Navigating the Maze

Lance W. Roberts, Jason Edgerton, Tracey Peter, and Lori Wilkinson

Author Information

Lance W. Roberts, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Manitoba, Jason Edgerton, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Manitoba, Tracey Peter, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology , University of Manitoba, and Lori Wilkinson, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Manitoba

Lance W. Roberts is a professor in the sociology department and a fellow of St. John's College at the University of Manitoba. For more than three decades he has taught undergraduate and graduate methods and statistics courses and is the author of several books and dozens of journal articles on topics related to social trends, ethnic relations, education, and inequality. He has co-authored the lab manuals the Statistics Coach and the Methods Coach for OUP Canada.

Jason Edgerton's doctoral thesis at the University of Manitoba, on class and gender disparities in academic achievement, reflects his areas of specialization in research methods, social inequality, stratification, class and power, globalization, comparative social policy, sociology of education and work, race/ethnicity and immigration, and social determinants of health. He has written, published, and presented a number of papers in these areas and currently teaches research methods in the sociology department at the University of Manitoba.

Tracey Peter is an assistant professor in the sociology department at the University of Manitoba. Her areas of specialization include data analysis and syntax programming, skills she advanced during her tenure as a research associate and programming manager with a nationally based evaluation research company. She currently teachers undergraduate and graduate courses in research methods and statistics and is working on several projects in mental health and violence, suicide prevention, education, and immigration. With Lance Roberts she co-authored the OUP Canada manuals the Statistics Coach and the Methods Coach.

Lori Wilkinson is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba and currently teaches ethnic relations, Canadian society and culture, and research methods. Her area of specialization centres on understanding the integration experiences of migrant youth in Canada as well as the labour market experiences of immigrant women and pedagogical research into new classroom technology. Lori is the Canadian adaptor of Bouma/Ling/Wilkinson, The Research Process, now in its second edition.