Carol S. Parke's Essential First Steps to Data Analysis: Scenario-Based Examples Using SPSS provides instruction and guidance on preparing quantitative data sets prior to answering a study's research questions. Such preparation may involve data management and manipulation tasks, data organization, structural changes to the data files, or conducting preliminary analysis. Twelve research-based scenarios are used to present the content. Each scenario tells the "story" of a researcher who thoroughly examined their data and the decisions they made along the way. The scenario begins with a description of the researcher's study and his/her data file(s), then describes the issues the researcher must address, explains why they are important, shows how SPSS was used to address the issues and prepare data, and shares the researcher's reflections and any additional decision-making. Finally, each scenario ends with the researcher's written summary of the procedures and outcomes from the initial data preparation or analysis.

The purpose of this book is to provide instruction and guidance on preparing quantitative data sets prior to answering a study's research questions. Preparation may involve data management and manipulation tasks, data organization, structural changes to data files, or conducting preliminary analysis such as examining the scale of a variable, the validity of assumptions or the nature and extent of missing data. The oresultso from these essential first steps can also help guide a researcher in selecting the most appropriate statistical tests for his/her study. The book is intended to serve as a supplemental text in statistics or research courses offered in graduate programs in education, counseling, school psychology, behavioral sciences, and social sciences as well as undergraduate programs that contain a heavy emphasis on statistics. The content and issues covered are also beneficial for faculty and researchers who are knowledgeable about research design and able to use a statistical software package, but are unsure of the first steps to take with their data. Increasingly, faculty are forming partnerships with schools, clinics, and other institutions to help them analyze data in their extensive databases. This book can serve as a reference for helping them get existing data files in an appropriate form to run statistical analysis. This book is not a replacement for a statistics textbook. It assumes that readers have some knowledge of basic statistical concepts and use of statistical software, or that they will be learning these concepts and skills concurrently throughout the course. SPSS was chosen to illustrate the preparation, evaluation, and manipulation of data. However, students or researchers who do not use SPSS will benefit from the content since the overall structure and pedagogical approach of the book focuses heavily on the data issues and decisions to be made.

A friendly and accessible approach to applying statistics in the real world With an emphasis on critical thinking, The Art of Data Analysis: How to Answer Almost Any Question Using Basic Statistics presents fun and unique examples, guides readers through the entire data collection and analysis process, and introduces basic statistical concepts along the way. Leaving proofs and complicated mathematics behind, the author portrays the more engaging side of statistics and emphasizes its role as a problem-solving tool. In addition, light-hearted case studies illustrate the application of statistics to real data analyses, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of commonly used techniques. Written for the growing academic and industrial population that uses statistics in everyday life, The Art of Data Analysis: How to Answer Almost Any Question Using Basic Statistics highlights important issues that often arise when collecting and sifting through data. Featured concepts include: • Descriptive statistics • Analysis of variance • Probability and sample distributions • Confidence intervals • Hypothesis tests • Regression • Statistical correlation • Data collection • Statistical analysis with graphs Fun and inviting from beginning to end, The Art of Data Analysis is an ideal book for students as well as managers and researchers in industry, medicine, or government who face statistical questions and are in need of an intuitive understanding of basic statistical reasoning.

Development Research in Practice leads the reader through a complete empirical research project, providing links to continuously updated resources on the DIME Wiki as well as illustrative examples from the Demand for Safe Spaces study. The handbook is intended to train users of development data how to handle data effectively, efficiently, and ethically. “In the DIME Analytics Data Handbook, the DIME team has produced an extraordinary public good: a detailed, comprehensive, yet easy-to-read manual for how to manage a data-oriented research project from beginning to end. It offers everything from big-picture guidance on the determinants of high-quality empirical research, to specific practical guidance on how to implement specific workflows—and includes computer code! I think it will prove durably useful to a broad range of researchers in international development and beyond, and I learned new practices that I plan on adopting in my own research group.†? —Marshall Burke, Associate Professor, Department of Earth System Science, and Deputy Director, Center on Food Security and the Environment, Stanford University “Data are the essential ingredient in any research or evaluation project, yet there has been too little attention to standardized practices to ensure high-quality data collection, handling, documentation, and exchange. Development Research in Practice: The DIME Analytics Data Handbook seeks to fill that gap with practical guidance and tools, grounded in ethics and efficiency, for data management at every stage in a research project. This excellent resource sets a new standard for the field and is an essential reference for all empirical researchers.†? —Ruth E. Levine, PhD, CEO, IDinsight “Development Research in Practice: The DIME Analytics Data Handbook is an important resource and a must-read for all development economists, empirical social scientists, and public policy analysts. Based on decades of pioneering work at the World Bank on data collection, measurement, and analysis, the handbook provides valuable tools to allow research teams to more efficiently and transparently manage their work flows—yielding more credible analytical conclusions as a result.†? —Edward Miguel, Oxfam Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics and Faculty Director of the Center for Effective Global Action, University of California, Berkeley “The DIME Analytics Data Handbook is a must-read for any data-driven researcher looking to create credible research outcomes and policy advice. By meticulously describing detailed steps, from project planning via ethical and responsible code and data practices to the publication of research papers and associated replication packages, the DIME handbook makes the complexities of transparent and credible research easier.†? —Lars Vilhuber, Data Editor, American Economic Association, and Executive Director, Labor Dynamics Institute, Cornell University

When you took statistics in school, your instructor gave you specially prepared datasets, told you what analyses to perform, and checked your work to see if it was correct. Once you left the class, though, you were on your own. Did you know how to create and prepare a dataset for analysis? Did you know how to select and generate appropriate graphics and statistics? Did you wonder why you were forced to take the class and when you would ever use what you learned? That's where Stats with Cats can help you out. The book will show you: How to decide what you should put in your dataset and how to arrange the data. How to decide what graphs and statistics to produce for your data. How you can create a statistical model to answer your data analysis questions. The book also provides enough feline support to minimize any stress you may experience. Charles Kufs has been crunching numbers for over thirty years, first as a hydrogeologist, and since the 1990s as a statistician. He is certified as a Six Sigma Green Belt by the American Society for Quality. He currently works as a statistician for the federal government and he is here to help you.

A guide for data managers and analyzers. It shares guidelines for identifying patterns, predicting future outcomes, and presenting findings to others.

Research Basics: Design to Data Analysis in Six Steps offers a fresh and creative approach to the research process based on author James V. Spickard’s decades of teaching experience. Using an intuitive six-step model, readers learn how to craft a research question and then identify a logical process for answering it. Conversational writing and multi-disciplinary examples illuminate the model’s simplicity and power, effectively connecting the “hows” and “whys” behind social science research. Students using this book will learn how to turn their research questions into results.

A comprehensive textbook on data analysis for business, applied economics and public policy that uses case studies with real-world data.

Design thinking is the core creative process for any designer; this book explores and explains this apparently mysterious "design ability". Focusing on what designers do when they design, Design Thinking is structured around a series of in-depth case studies of outstanding and expert designers at work, interwoven with overviews and analyses. The range covered reflects the breadth of Design, from hardware to software product design, from architecture to Formula One design. The book offers new insights and understanding of design thinking, based on evidence from observation and investigation of design practice. Design Thinking is the distillation of the work of one of Design's most influential thinkers. Nigel Cross goes to the heart of what it means to think and work as a designer. The book is an ideal guide for anyone who wants to be a designer or to know how good designers work in the field of contemporary Design.

This book trains the next generation of scientists representing different disciplines to leverage the data generated during routine patient care. It formulates a more complete lexicon of evidence-based recommendations and support shared, ethical decision making by doctors with their patients. Diagnostic and therapeutic technologies continue to evolve rapidly, and both individual practitioners and clinical teams face increasingly complex ethical decisions. Unfortunately, the current state of medical knowledge does not provide the guidance to make the majority of clinical decisions on the basis of evidence. The present research infrastructure is inefficient and frequently produces unreliable results that cannot be replicated. Even randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the traditional gold standards of the research reliability hierarchy, are not without limitations. They can be costly, labor intensive, and slow, and can return results that are seldom generalizable to every patient population. Furthermore, many pertinent but unresolved clinical and medical systems issues do not seem to have attracted the interest of the research enterprise, which has come to focus instead on cellular and molecular investigations and single-agent (e.g., a drug or device) effects. For clinicians, the end result is a bit of a “data desert” when it comes to making decisions. The new research infrastructure proposed in this book will help the medical profession to make ethically sound and well informed decisions for their patients.