Customer Reviews

Discovering Statistics Using SPSS (Introducing Statistical Method)

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Discovering Stats is the best Stats book I have ever used! I am a Phd student, so of course I have to take a lot of Stats classes. I can not say enough about the great job Andy Field does in breaking down formulas and explaining each step of the process in a concise, to the point manner and how to use SPSS. I am never confused in reading this book and use at as my main text in replace of the class text book. Every other text I have ever had gets blown out of the water by this one. I wish I had this in undergrad.

I find this boook to be extremely helpful. It explains the psychology statistics in a very easy to understand conversational manner. Each SPSS test is described in thourough detail with full color examples and each output box is thouroughly explained. The only thing that prevented me from giving this a perfect 5 is that the ink seems to have never completley dried. Since I handle this book a lot I am finding that the text can smudge very easily.I have to treat it with extra care or the words could easily become incomprehensible. Overall 4 and 1/2 stars.

This book was recommended by the instructor. It's a lot of book, and at times difficult to find the exact information you need. There were a lot of long-winded explanations that sometimes confused. The author is Welsh, so there are a lot of references to that culture that Americans might not understand.
On the other hand, it was helpful for correlation and regression analysis.
I bought the SPSS Survival Manual by Julie Pallant also. I ended up using it more often, as I could get to the information I needed for a particular task faster.

I wanted a stats book that would tell me how to select analyses, run them in SPSS, and interpret the output, and that's exactly what this book does. The terms/jargon/formulas are kept to a minimum. This is a very practical, very easy to use book. Andy Field is TERRIFIC and making concepts clear, getting to the point, and even making me laugh while trying to figure out if In need to run an ANCOVA or a repeated-measures ANOVA. Great, great book.

If you're really into stats and numbers this might not be the book for you. If you're looking for how to run analyses in SPSS, and do it well, and you don't feel the need to know how to do it by hand, you will love this book. Highly recommended.

I've now endured one of the most miserable courses I've ever taken - a course on statistics. That course was consistent with what one might expect to exemplify typical stats courses everywhere - dry, boring, and no regard whatsoever for those who really want to know about the subject but have limited backgrounds. The primary text we used for that course was literally one of the worst I've ever come across, besides the fact that that book was nearly $200; it was poorly written and nearly comprehensible. I'd rather have hemorrhoids lanced than to have to read that book (or any part of it) again. Then, to compound matters, asking the instructor about the veritable tsunami of nearly incomprehensible material we covered in the class only led to suggestions that we go back and "read the text."

In an effort to survive, I tried everything I could think of just to get through the course - I bought numerous other books on stats and conducted endless online searches just to hang on to my sanity. I came across "Discovering Statistics Using SPSS" while combing Amazon for other resources and, while the book is somewhat expensive (although it is still far less than the text we were subjected to),given the fact that so many others had already given it a high rating, I took a chance: this book turned into a lifesaver! I only wish that we used this book instead of our assigned text. I'm very glad I purchased this book and can only hope that it will find use in classes such as the one I just suffered through.

Finally, I can't help but note a comment from the previous reviewer concerning the coverage of "syntax" - this book is NOT about every last advanced feature found in SPSS (which, is also a very non-intuitive and highly complex program), nor should it be! The other reviewer's complaint is utterly asinine. Who cares about syntax when you're just trying to learn about statistics? For those who haven't yet had to suffer through a stats course the uses SPSS (recently renamed "PASW"), "syntax" refers to the programming code that can to be manually entered into the program and is very DOS-like. This is one of the archaic things that SPSS/PASW and SAS (another stats program) heap upon users and doing so when one is just trying to learn the basic functions of the program makes things much more confusing. With that in mind, this book does an outstanding job in explaining how to use SPSS which, under even the best of circumstances is not a simple thing to do.

If all textbooks were written as well as this one, students would learn a lot more, and learning would be far less painful.

I've been teaching statistics for 37 years, as well as consulting with undergraduates, graduate students, colleagues and professionals in the community. For most of that time, SPSS has been my computer program of choice. Unfortunately, SPSS has a maddening tendency to revision every couple of years, and those revisions often make it difficult to figure out how to get things done with the program. There are plenty of other reviews herein that outline what is covered in the book. I've looked at a number of books designed to facilitate using SPSS, and Field's book is clearly my first choice. It occupies a prominent place in my office. My only complaint is that it's a bit heavy to carry home from time to time. What more can I say?

Most stats and SPSS books are incomplete and/or difficult to understand, as if the authors are the keepers of this mysterious knowledge, and it can only be shared in the classroom. This book, however, has everything. The FULL explanation of every type of analysis, what all of the terms mean, step-by-step instructions in SPSS RE: how to run the analysis, with pictures of the windows in SPSS, plus pictures of every output box and a clear explanation of what's in the output. FINALLY! Plus, it's actually a pretty engaging read, with some humor and personal stories to keep your interest. For all that you get, it's an excellent value; high recommended!

This book appears to be an excellent statistics book, probably my best. The SPSS techniques are right in line with what you're learning so as you learn the fundamental techniques, you're learning how to use them in one of the three major statistics software packages. I actually dropped the stats course which required this text in favor of a mathematical statistics course, but I'm keeping the book because it's better than the other two I owned. I think I'll also use it as a primer for SPSS as I've spent the majority of my time in SAS. I must say, reading through the table of contents is EXCITING. It also seems that the book is written with a more "conversational" voice than most other stats books, which likely reduces the fatigue that accompanies reading dry material, no matter how useful the content.

Do not hesitate to buy this book! I just finished my PhD. While I had a couple of statistics courses, they were not sufficient to help me analyze the data in my study. Andy's book was a great way to re-familiarize myself with the statistics I already knew, to learn new tests, and most importantly, how to do conduct them with SPSS. The book is also good about referencing other helpful books and articles.

My only caveat about the book is that some of the information is misleading, particularly with regard to higher level tests. For example, if you you're doing multiple regression or ANCOVA and there's a significant interaction between treatment conditions and one of the co-variates, Andy kind of throws his hands up in the air and says "this violates the assumption of homogeneity of regression slopes... see this other chapter to do a much more complicated test." But, if you do your homework, you realize Andy's advice is wrong. In truth, there are ways to "probe" the interaction and learn how the treatments behave at different levels of the co-variate. It's a pretty common procedure, so it's kind of stunning that Andy missed this.

This issue aside, I still think of this book as my statistics bible. Just know that if you're interested in doing more complicated tests, you need to do your homework and look at other references, too.

An easy read and makes difficult concepts understandable. The author's humor is sometimes a bit sophomoric...but at the same time is entertaining. I would definitely recommend this text!