Synopsis
The structure of this book parallels the ten step analysis process I propose. The first couple of chapters in Step 1 are intended to get you ready to conduct the analysis—refreshing your statistical background and clarifying your analysis objectives. The four chapters of Step 2 help you get your dataset ready for analysis using the PC-ORD software. Two more chapters in Step 3 help you structure your matrices to address your analysis objectives. The seven chapters of Step 4 focus on exploring and manipulating your dataset to make sure your data mean what you think. Finally, the three chapters in Step 5 prepare you to select your analysis tools.
The twelve chapters in Step 6 each focus on a different analysis tool, allowing you to focus your attention on those you wish to apply. For each procedure, I provide a conceptual description of what it is good for, what it actually does, what it means, what you need in order to run it, what you get in the output, what you should know about its strengths and weaknesses, how to run it in PC-ORD version 6, and when you might use such a tool. There are certainly more ways to use the tools discussed in the book than the few ways presented here, but hopefully the descriptions provided will get you thinking about the application of these tools.
Finally, Steps 7 and 8 briefly reinforce the need to seek confirmation in your results before turning to interpretation in Step 9 and communication in Step 10.
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