The introduction to statistics that psychology students can't
afford to be without

Understanding statistics is a requirement for obtaining and
making the most of a degree in psychology, a fact of life that
often takes first year psychology students by surprise. Filled with
jargon-free explanations and real-life examples, Psychology
Statistics For Dummies makes the often-confusing world of
statistics a lot less baffling, and provides you with the
step-by-step instructions necessary for carrying out data
analysis.

Psychology Statistics For Dummies:

* Serves as an easily accessible supplement to doorstop-sized
psychology textbooks

* Provides psychology students with psychology-specific
statistics instruction

* Includes clear explanations and instruction on performing
statistical analysis

* Teaches students how to analyze their data with SPSS, the most
widely used statistical packages among students

Donncha Hanna, PhD is a psychology lecturer at Queen's University Belfast whose primary teaching responsibilities include statistics and research methods. Martin Dempster, PhD is a health psychologist and the research coordinator for the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology programme at Queen's University Belfast.

Klappentext

Learn to:

• Use SPSS to analyse data
• Master statistical methods and procedures using psychology-based explanations and examples
• Create better reports
• Identify key concepts and pass your course

The quick, easy way to master all the statistics you'll ever need

The bad news first: if you want a psychology degree you'll need to know statistics. Now for the good news: Psychology Statistics For Dummies. Featuring jargon-free explanations, step-by-step instructions and dozens of real-life examples, Psychology Statistics For Dummies makes the knotty world of statistics a lot less baffling. Rather than padding the text with concepts and procedures irrelevant to the task, the authors focus only on the statistics psychology students need to know. As an alternative to typical, lead-heavy statistics texts or supplements to assigned course reading, this is one book psychology students won't want to be without.

• Ease into statistics – start out with an introduction to how statistics are used by psychologists, including the types of variables they use and how they measure them
• Get your feet wet – quickly learn the basics of descriptive statistics, such as central tendency and measures of dispersion, along with common ways of graphically depicting information
• Meet your new best friend – learn the ins and outs of SPSS, the most popular statistics software package among psychology students, including how to input, manipulate and analyse data
• Analyse this – get up to speed on statistical analysis core concepts, such as probability and inference, hypothesis testing, distributions, Z-scores and effect sizes
• Correlate that – get the lowdown on common procedures for defining relationships between variables, including linear regressions, associations between categorical data and more
• Analyse by inference – master key methods in inferential statistics, including techniques for analysing independent groups designs and repeated-measures research designs

Open the book and find:

• Ways to describe statistical data
• How to use SPSS statistical software
• Probability theory and statistical inference
• Descriptive statistics basics
• How to test hypotheses
• Correlations and other relationships between variables
• Core concepts in statistical analysis for psychology
• Analysing research designs

Understanding statistics is a requirement for obtaining and making the most of a degree in psychology, a fact of life that often takes first year psychology students by surprise. Filled with jargon-free explanations and real-life examples, Psychology Statistics For Dummies makes the often-confusing world of statistics a lot less baffling, and provides you with the step-by-step instructions necessary for carrying out data analysis.

Psychology Statistics For Dummies:

• Serves as an easily accessible supplement to doorstop-sized psychology textbooks
• Provides psychology students with psychology-specific statistics instruction
• Includes clear explanations and instruction on performing statistical analysis
• Teaches students how to analyze their data with SPSS, the most widely used statistical packages among students

Introduction 1

About This Book 2

What You're Not to Read 2

Foolish Assumptions 3

How this Book is Organised 3

Icons Used in This Book 4

Where to Go from Here 5

Part I: Describing Data 7

Chapter 1: Statistics? I Thought This Was Psychology! 9

Know Your Variables 10

What is SPSS? 11

Descriptive Statistics 12

Central tendency 12

Dispersion 12

Graphs 13

Standardised scores 13

Inferential Statistics 13

Hypotheses 14

Parametric and non-parametric variables 14

Research Designs 15

Correlational design 15

Experimental design 16

Independent groups design 16

Repeated measures design 17

Getting Started 18

Chapter 2: What Type of Data Are We Dealing With? 19

Understanding Discrete and Continuous Variables 20

Looking at Levels of Measurement 21

Measurement properties 21

Types of measurement level 23

Determining the Role of Variables 24

Independent variables 25

Dependent variables 25

Covariates 26

Chapter 3: Inputting Data, Labelling and Coding in SPSS 27

Variable View Window 28

Creating variable names 29

Deciding on variable type 30

Displaying the data: The width, decimals, columns and align headings 32

Using labels 33

Using values 34

Dealing with missing data 36

Assigning the level of measurement 37

Data View Window 39

Entering new data 40

Creating new variables 42

Sorting cases 43

Recoding variables 45

Output Window 48

Using the output window 48

Saving your output 51

Chapter 4: Measures of Central Tendency 53

Defining Central Tendency 54

The Mode 55

Determining the mode 55

Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of using the mode 58

Obtaining the mode in SPSS 59

The Median 64

Determining the median 64

Knowing the advantages and disadvantages to using the median 66

Obtaining the median in SPSS 67

The Mean 68

Determining the mean 68

Knowing the advantages and disadvantages to using the mean 69

Obtaining the mean in SPSS 69

Choosing between the Mode, Median and Mean 71

Chapter 5: Measures of Dispersion 73

Defining Dispersion 73

The Range 74

Determining the range 74

Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of using the range 75

Obtaining the range in SPSS 76

The Interquartile Range 78

Determining the interquartile range 78

Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of using the interquartile range 81

Obtaining the interquartile range in SPSS 82

The Standard Deviation 83

Defining the standard deviation 83

Knowing the advantages and disadv…