Prof. J. P. Verma is currently working as Dean Students Welfare and Head, Department of Sports Psychology at Lakshmibai National Institute of Physical Education (LNIPE), Gwalior, India. He also worked as Director, Centre for Advanced Studies at the institute. Prof. Verma is a triple Masters – in Statistics, Psychology and Computer Application, besides a PhD in Mathematics, and has an experience of more than thirty six years in teaching and research. He has published about nine books with leading publishers like Wiley, Springer, McGraw Hills on research and statistics in the area of management, exercise science, health, sports and physical education. He has a patent to his credit on FitnessWatch (a fitness assessment and management system for school children and youth). This know-how was validated by the independent body appointed by the LNIPE with the grant of Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India. Prof. Verma was a visiting fellow in the University of Sydney in 2002. He has undertaken academic visits to institutions in Bulgaria, Qatar, Australia, Poland and Scotland, and where he has conducted numerous workshops on research methodology, research designs, multivariate analysis, and data modeling in the area of management, social sciences, physical education, sports sciences, economics, and health sciences.
This book, specifically developed for students of psychology, covers a wide range of topics in statistics and research designs taught in psychology, in particular, and other disciplines like management, sociology, education, home science, and nutrition, in general, in most universities. It explains how to use Excel to analyze research data by elaborating statistical concepts. Each chapter contains sections like “Check you Computing skill” and “Check your Statistical Concepts” to enable students to assess their knowledge in a graded manner.
The book addresses one of the major challenges in psychology research, viz., how to measure subjective phenomenon like attitude, desire, and preferences of an individual. Separate emphasis has been given to the measurement techniques which are essential tools to assess these subjective parameters in numerical form, required for statistical analysis to draw meaningful conclusions. The book is equally helpful to students of humanities, life sciences and other applied areas. Consisting of 14 chapters, the book covers all relevant topics of statistics and research designs which are important for students to plan and complete their research work.