“Overall, this is the best political science research methods book I’ve seen.”

-William Field, Rutgers University

Building students’ analytic abilities and developing their statistical reasoning with new data, fresh exercises, and engaging examples, this accessible introduction to the essential elements of political analysis walks students through the basics—measuring concepts, describing variables, formulating and testing hypotheses, controlling for alternative explanations, and interpreting graphic displays, and nearly 50 practical exercises motivate them to use their new skills with confidence.

New to this edition:

• All examples updated with current data sources


• Treatment of visual depictions of variables and relationships and enhanced coverage of logistic regression


• A total of 48 end-of-chapter exercises, many new or completely revised


• More accessible discussion of spurious, additive, and interaction relationships


• Coverage of box plots and error bar charts


• New discussion of ways to represent probabilities in logistic regression