Many students find statistics courses alienating, boring, intimidating, or all of the above! Data Analysis with SPSS® is designed to help students develop an appreciation and hopefully an excitement for quantitative inquiry. Written in nine manageable chapters, this book first orients students to the approach researchers use to frame research questions and the logic of establishing causal relations. Students are then oriented to the SPSS® program and how to examine data sets. They are then guided through univariate analysis, bivariate analysis, graphic analysis, and multivariate analysis. Students conclude their course by learning how to write a research report and by engaging in their own research project.

This text is designed to teach students how to explore data in a systematic manner using the most popular professional statistics program for social scientists on the market today, SPSS® (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). The book is organized to guide students through the logic of data analysis, from exploring data sets all the way through multivariate analysis and the writing of a research report.

Each book is packaged with a disk containing the GSS (General Social Survey) file and the States file. The GSS file contains 100 variables generated from interviews with 2900 people concerning their behaviors and attitudes on a wide variety of issues such as abortion, aid to the poor, religion, prejudice, sexuality, and politics. The States data allows comparison of all 50 states with 400 variables indicating issues such as unemployment, earnings, environment, criminality, population, corrections, and education. Students will ultimately use these data to conduct their own independent research project with SPSS®.