First Steps in Research and Statistics: A Practical Workbook for Psychology Students

ISBN-13: 9780415201018 / Angielski / Miękka / 2000 / 304 str.

Dennis Howitt

Opis

This approach to learning about quantitative methods assumes no previous knowledge or experience and every stage of the research process is covered. Key topics include: formulating research questions; how to choose the right statistical test for research design; important research issues, such as questionnaire design, ethics, sampling, reliability and validity; conducting simple statistics to explore relationships and differences in the data; writing statistics to explore relationships and differences in the data; and writing the research report and presenting statistics. Simple worksheets and flow diagrams guide the reader through the research stages and each chapter contains exercises with answers to check understanding.

Recenzje

This book provides the novice psychologist not just with a comprehensive and comprehensible guide to basic statistics and methodology, but also illuminates and illustrates the links between the two: an unusual, if not a unique feature. I would certainly recommend this book to all first year students who pose the question: 'Why do we have to learn about statistics?' - Graham Davies, University of Leicester

Spis treści

Part I: The Basics of Research. Asking Research Questions. Common Research Methods. Ethics in the Conduct of Research. Measuring Variables. Part II: The Statistical Analysis of Single Variables and Simple Surveys. Two Types of Data Analysis. Describing and Summarising Category Data. Describing and Summarising Score Data. Surveys and Sampling. Part III: Exploring Correlational Relationships in Survey/Non-experimental Studies. Examining Relationships Between Two Variables. Numerical Ways of Describing Relationships: Correlation Coefficients. Statistical Significance of the Correlation Coefficient. Differences and Association Among Two Sets of Categories: Chi-square. Conducting Survey/Non-experimental Studies. Part IV: Exploring Differences Between Group Means. Testing for Differences in Means; More on Significance Testing. Comparing the Scores of Two Groups of People: Mann-Whitney U-test. Comparing Scores from the Same Group of People on Two Occasions: Wilcoxon Matched-pairs Test. Part V: The Essentials of Designing Experiments. Designing and Running Experiments. Comparing the Scores of a Randomly Assigned Experimental and Control Group: Unrelated t-test. Comparing the Scores of a Counterbalanced Related Subjects Experiment: Related t-test. Comparing Three or More Groups on a Numerical Score. Part VI: The Report. Writing a Research Report. References. Index.

O autorze

Dennis Howitt and Duncan Cramer both teach at Loughborough University and have written several books on research and statistics.