Customer Reviews

SPSS 11.0 Guide to Data Analysis

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Prior to grad school, my highest attainment in math was a C in 10th grade Algebra II, yet this book has made introductory statistics and even analysis in SPSS non-threatening and stimulating. Her text is plain English, not dry, with the essential understated humor here and there. As mentioned in other review(s) her use of question/answer format is really useful. She uses 'frequently asked (by beginners)' questions as openners to discussing a topic in more detail, and this approach is very good. Photos of various menu screens in spss are provided and fully explained, as well as samples of output. She takes you up through multiple regression. I wish there was an advanced book on the way!

I needed a book on understanding SPSS. I started without any knowledge of SPSS and I wanted something concise and easy to comprehend. One of the main features of this book is the "?" you will find in between paragraphs. It answers the queries and questions that a beginner would usually ask and the best thing is you don't need to search hard enough! This was the main reason why I got the book. I have looked through a couple of other books on SPSS. Sometimes they are too brief and do not have answers to my questions, some are simply too wordy - wasting too much of my time to search for the answers. If you need something that could guide your understand and apply it straight to your research work, this is one good book for you!

I've found this book extremely helpful in understanding how to set up the kinds of analysis in SPSS that I want to conduct. I have the theoretical understanding to design the experiment and know what analyses need to be conducted (and could do it by hand if I had to), but this books helps me understand how to efficiently analyze my data within the program itself. Of related books I have looked at, this is the best. The one drawback is that it is designed as a classroom tool with exercises and learning points and not for the professional user. That space could be used for more information and explanation.

SPSS is a popular software package used by graduate students in the social sciences, since it's a user-friendly software unlike some of the more complicated packages like SAS or Minitab that require programming language and a very sound understanding of statistics before you use them.

This guide is a basic guide to data analysis, and how to do this in SPSS. In fact, I would almost say that it is over simplified - almost all of these analyses can be done in Excel - except that it's not as easy to do it in Excel as it is in SPSS. Although SPSS itself may be somewhat simple compared to other stats software, the guide itself is marvelous.

The guide not only takes you through the steps of "how to" use the software package SPPS, but it also explains why you would want to run a particular analysis and how to interpret the results. It then goes on to explain how to modify those results or analysis according to your preferences.

For those people wishing to run more complex models, such as multiple regression, it is probably recommended that you know the statistical theory behind it, or are taking a class on it, rather than try to do this simply by using the guide, in order to make sure that you achieve a full understanding of the results. Because SPSS is so easy to use, it's easy to fall into the trap of having it run an analysis that is not so easy to interpret.

However, for people who are using SPSS as part of a course, this guide is absolutely great and I highly recommend it for any SPSS users, since the help function in SPSS itself is virtually useless.

...This book should be labeled as a School or Classroom Edition and should not be sold publicly because it needs an instructor to guide you. The questions at the end of every chapter carry only a few answers to refer to. The author is not much help either and was so passive when I requested to be referred to the full answers to the questions saying that the reference for this is only for the instructors teaching the course.

Individuals intending to buy this book for self-learning should think twice. ...

This is the excellent book for everyone who wants to study statistics using SPSS software. Easy to read, very friendly, lots of examples and explanations. Wonderful sense of humor (can you believe it in a book on statistics?). I recommend it to everyone.

This book leads you step by step to understand the statistics very well

First of all, I bought this book from Amazon as there are no classroom courses offered on SPSS in the place where I come from; thus I have to learn it on my own.

This book should be labeled as a School or Classroom Edition and should not be sold publicly because it needs an instructor to guide you. The questions at the end of every chapter carry only a few answers to refer to. The author is not much help either and was so passive when I requested to be referred to the full answers to the questions saying that the reference for this is only for the instructors teaching the course.

Individuals intending to buy this book for self-learning should think twice. Aside from the absence to the full reference for answers to questions on each chapter, Marija Norusis, is the most passive authors I have ever come across.