SPSS 14.0 Guide to Data Analysis: [With CDROM]

I have used this book (previous editions) in teaching a graduate level research methods and statistical software class in the late 1990s. It is the best book available for anyone who needs to use SPSS or who needs to know how to organize data, interpret statistical output and understand the process of quantitative research. I now teach short courses and do statistical consulting for faculty, staff and students at a university. Whenever anyone asks what I recommend if they want to get SPSS and/or statistical thinking, its a no brainer. This book is hands-down the best for either or both of those goals.

The book is written in an easy to understand language. The examples help to recreate the steps explained in the different chapters. I can only recommend this book.

In the humanities and social sciences, SPSS is probably the most heavily used statistical package. Norusis helps you understand why. Even if you do not have a strong background in statistics. The book teaches both statistics and the use of SPSS to analyse your statistical data. The text starts off with the most basic material, like showing a simple frequency table. Or displaying it visually using a pie chart or a bar chart. Then, when there are too many values for a bar chart, you can use a histogram, which has bins, each representing a range of values of the independent variable. SPSS has the ability to quickly display in these formats. Then the text progressively takes you into analysis. Starting with the computation of mean, median and variances. Later, when there are several independent variables, other graphing formats like scatterplots come into play. But the more challenging sections involve testing hypothesis. From these come the use of chi square tests, Student's T-distribution, nonparametric tests and so on. If you make it through the book, you get an impressive self taught education in statistics and SPSS.