639984762
639984762
639984762
Fourth Edition
Stephen Sweet
Ithaca College
Karen Grace-Martin
The Analysis Factor
Boston Columbus Indianapolis New York San Francisco Upper Saddle River
Amsterdam Cape Town Dubai London Madrid Milan Munich Paris Montreal Toronto
Delhi Mexico City Sao Paulo Sydney Hong Kong Seoul Singapore Taipei Tokyo
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements viii
About the Authors ix
Dedication ix
Chapter 1
Key Concepts in Social Science Research 1
Overview 1
Nonspuriousness 8
Data Sets 9
Summary 11
Key Terms 12
Exercises 13
Chapter 2
Getting Started: Accessing, Examining, and Saving Data 23
Overview 23
String Variables 26
Categorical Variables 26
Scale Variables 26
Initial Settings 27
Defining and
Saving a New Data Set
28
Managing Data Sets: Dropping and Adding Variables, Merging Data Sets 33
Dropping and Adding Variables 33
Merging and Importing Files 34
Key Terms 37
Exercises 39
Chapter 3
Univariate Analysis: Descriptive Statistics 45
Overview 45
Histograms 49
Shapes of Distributions 52
Measures of Central Tendency 53
Measures of Spread 56
Contents iv
Box Plots 58
Exploring Distributions of Categorical Variables 60
Pie Charts 62
Bar Charts 66
Summary 67
Key Terms 68
Exercises 69
Chapter 4
Constructing Variables 77
Overview 77
Why Construct New Variables From Existing Data? 77
Key Terms 92
Exercises 93
Chapter 5
Assessing Association through Bivariate Analysis 105
Overview 105
Why Do We Need Significance Tests? 105
Scatterplots 120
Summary 124
Key Terms 124
Exercises 125
Chapter 6
Exercises 151
Causality 181
Summary 182
Chapter 8
Logistic Regression 189
Overview 189
What Is Logistic Regression? 189
Summary 204
Chapter 9
Writing a Research Report 213
Overview 213
Summary 222
Chapter 10
Research Projects 225
Potential Research Projects 225
Permissions 273
References and Further Reading 274
Index 276