Bayesian Methods: A Social and Behavioral Sciences Approach (Chapman & Hall/CRC Statistics in the Social and Behavioral Sciences) - Hardcover

Gill, Jeff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1584882883 ISBN 13: 9781584882886

Publisher: Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2002

Synopsis

Despite increasing interest in Bayesian approaches, especially across the social sciences, it has been virtually impossible to find a text that introduces Bayesian data analysis in a manner accessible to social science students. The Bayesian paradigm is ideally suited to the type of data analysis they will have to perform, but the associated mathematics can be daunting.

Bayesian Methods: A Social and Behavioral Sciences Approach presents the basic principles of Bayesian statistics in a treatment designed specifically for students in the social sciences and related fields. Requiring few prerequisites, it first introduces Bayesian statistics and inference with detailed descriptions of setting up a probability model, specifying prior distributions, calculating a posterior distribution, and describing the results. This is followed by explicit guidance on assessing model quality and model fit using various diagnostic techniques and empirical summaries. Finally, it introduces hierarchical models within the Bayesian context, which leads naturally to Markov Chain Monte Carlo computing techniques and other numerical methods.

The author emphasizes practical computing issues, includes specific details for Bayesian model building and testing, and uses the freely available R and BUGS software for examples and exercise problems. The result is an eminently practical text that is comprehensive, rigorous, and ideally suited to teaching future empirical social scientists.

About this title

About the Author

Jeff Gill, University of California - Davis, USA, DAVIS CA, U.S.A

Review

This book is a brilliant and importantly very accessible introduction to the concept and application of Bayesian approaches to data analysis. The clear strength of the book is in making the concept practical and accessible, without necessarily dumbing it down. ... The coverage is also remarkable.
- Dr. S. V. Subramanian, Harvard School of Public Health

One of the signal contributions of Bayesian methods: A Social and Behavioral Sciences Approach is to reintroduce Bayesian inference and computing to a general social sciences audience. This is an important contribution--one that will make demand for this book high...Jeff Gill has gone some way toward reinventing the graduate-level methodology textbook...

...Gill's treatment of the practicalities of convergence is a real service...new users of the technique will appreciate this material. ...the inclusion of material on hierarchical modeling at first seems unconventional; its use in political science, while increasing, has been limited. However, Bayesian inference and MCMC methods are well-suited to these types of problems, and it is exactly these types of treatments that push the discipline in new directions.

Edition details

• Publisher: Chapman and Hall/CRC
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1584882883
• ISBN 13: 9781584882886
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480