Beyond Statistics

Book excerpt: A practical introduction to terms, concepts, and processes of data analysis, introducing operations common to all statistical software. This book goes beyond basic research methods and statistics, and discusses actually working with data, including data entry, data cleaning, finding errors, organizing data, transforming variables, and combining and aggregating data sets. It provides a useful vocabulary for thinking and talking about data and demystifies statistical software by showing readers how to think about data from the computer's perspective. People with an interest in research methods, experimental methodology, and statistics in the fields of psychology, sociology, and social work.