Statistics in Plain English 4th Edition

Book Preface

This introductory textbook provides an inexpensive, brief overview of statistics to help readers gain a better understanding of how statistics work and how to interpret them correctly.
Each chapter describes a different statistical technique, ranging from basic concepts like central  tendency and describing distributions to more advanced concepts such as t tests, regression,  repeated-measures ANOVA, and factor analysis. Each chapter begins with a short description  of the statistic and when it should be used. This is followed by a more in-depth explanation of  how the statistic works. Finally, each chapter ends with an example of the statistic in use, and  a sample of how the results of analyses using the statistic might be written up for publication.
A glossary of statistical terms and symbols is also included. Using the author’s own data and  examples from published research and the popular media, the book is a straightforward and  accessible guide to statistics.

New features in the fourth edition include:
◾ sets of work problems in each chapter with detailed solutions and additional problems  online to help students test their understanding of the material;
◾ new “Worked Examples” to walk students through how to calculate and interpret the  statistics featured in each chapter;
◾ new examples from the author’s own data, published research, and the popular media to  help students see how statistics are applied and written about in professional publications;
◾ many more examples, tables, and charts to help students visualize key concepts, clarify concepts, and demonstrate how statistics are used in the real world;
◾ a more logical flow, with correlation directly preceding regression, and a combined glossary  appearing at the end of the book;
◾ a “Quick Guide to Statistics, Formulas, and Degrees of Freedom” at the start of the book,  plainly outlining each statistic and when students should use them;
◾ greater emphasis on (and description of ) effect size and confidence interval reporting,  reflecting their growing importance in research across the social science disciplines;
◾ an expanded website at www.routledge.com/cw/urdan with PowerPoint presentations,  chapter summaries, a new test bank, interactive problems and detailed solutions to the text’s  work problems, SPSS datasets for practice, links to useful tools and resources, and videos  showing how to calculate statistics, how to calculate and interpret the appendices, and how  to understand some of the more confusing tables of output produced by SPSS.
Statistics in Plain English, Fourth Edition is an ideal guide to statistics and research methods, for  courses that use statistics taught at the undergraduate or graduate level, or as a reference tool for  anyone interested in refreshing their memory on key statistical concepts. The research examples  are from psychology, education, and other social and behavioral sciences.

Brief Contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
About the Author xvii
Quick Guide to Statistics, Formulas, and Degrees of Freedom xix
Chapter 1 Introduction to Social Science Research Principles and Terminology 1
Chapter 2 Measures of Central Tendency 13
Chapter 3 Measures of Variability 21
Chapter 4 The Normal Distribution 33
Chapter 5 Standardization and z Scores 43
Chapter 6 Standard Errors 57
Chapter 7 Statistical Significance, Effect Size, and Confidence Intervals 73
Chapter 8 t Tests 93
Chapter 9 One-Way Analysis of Variance 113
Chapter 10 Factorial Analysis of Variance 133
Chapter 11 Repeated-Measures Analysis of Variance 149
Chapter 12 Correlation 165
Chapter 13 Regression 183
Chapter 14 The Chi-Square Test of Independence 205
Chapter 15 Factor Analysis and Reliability Analysis: Data Reduction Techniques 213
Appendices
Appendix A: Area Under the Normal Curve Beyond z 229
Appendix B: Critical Values of the t Distributions 231
Appendix C: Critical Values of the F Distributions 233
Appendix D: Critical Values of the Studentized Range Statistic (for Tukey HSD Tests) 239
Appendix E: Critical Values of the χ2 Distributions 243
Bibliography 245
Glossary of Terms 247
Glossary of Symbols 257
Index