Understanding Social Statistics

Understanding Social Statistics

by Nigel Gilbert (Author), Jane L. Fielding (Author)

Synopsis

Designed to help take the fear out of the essential use of numbers in social research, this textbook introduces students to statistics as a powerful means of revealing patterns in human behaviour. The authors provide an accessible guide to quantitative data analysis including: clear explanations of all the methods; comprehensive coverage of analytic tools; an introduction to using SPSS, the most widely used statistical analysis program; examples based on real datasets - the UK General Household Survey and the World Bank's Social Indicators of Development - available to students on the World Wide Web; helpful chapter summaries; exercises at the end of each chapter; and a glossary of key terms. Understanding Social Statistics will be an essential textbook for courses on statistics and quantitative research across the social sciences.

$3.23

Save:$22.92 (88%)

Quantity

2 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
Edition: First
Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
Published: 02 Feb 2000

ISBN 10: 0803979835
ISBN 13: 9780803979833

Media Reviews
'Understanding Social Statistics is aimed at undergraduate sociology students, but it would also be useful to mature seekers of statistical expertise. It is well written, attractively laid out and uses a language that demystifies the subject, instead of cloaking it with obscure technical terms' - Times Higher Education Supplement
Author Bio
Jane Fielding gained her DPhil in Biochemistry in 1976 to be followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Queen Elizabeth College and Imperial College, University of London. She joined Surrey University in 1981 as a researcher on several part-time contracts in the departments of Sociology, Psychology and Human Biology. In 1984 she was appointed as the Departmental Research Fellow and has been involved with the teaching of computing and quantitative methods since that time. In 1994 she took up her current lectureship in quantitative methods and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2001. Nigel Gilbert read for a first degree in Engineering, intending to go into the computer industry. However, he was lured into sociology and obtained his doctorate on the sociology of scientific knowledge from the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Michael Mulkay. His research and teaching interests have reflected his continuing interest in both sociology and computer science (and engineering more widely). His main research interests are processual theories of social phenomena, the development of computational sociology and the methodology of computer simulation, especially agent-based modelling. He is Director of the Centre for Research in Social Simulation. He is also Director of the University's Institute of Advanced Studies and responsible for its development as a leading centre for intellectual interchange. He is the author or editor of several textbooks on sociological methods of research and statistics and editor of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation.