Basic Quantitative Research Methods for Urban Planners

In most planning practice and research, planners work with quantitative data. By summarizing, analyzing, and presenting data, planners create stories and narratives that explain various planning issues. Particularly, in the era of big data and data mining, there is a stronger demand in planning practice and research to increase capacity for data-driven storytelling.

Basic Quantitative Research Methods for Urban Planners provides readers with comprehensive knowledge and hands-on techniques for a variety of quantitative research studies, from descriptive statistics to commonly used inferential statistics. It covers statistical methods from chi-square through logistic regression and also quasi-experimental studies. At the same time, the book provides fundamental knowledge about research in general, such as planning data sources and uses, conceptual frameworks, and technical writing. The book presents relatively complex material in the simplest and clearest way possible, and through the use of real world planning examples, makes the theoretical and abstract content of each chapter as tangible as possible.

It will be invaluable to students and novice researchers from planning programs, intermediate researchers who want to branch out methodologically, practicing planners who need to conduct basic analyses with planning data, and anyone who consumes the research of others and needs to judge its validity and reliability.

Reid Ewing, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, associate editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association and Cities, and columnist for Planning magazine, writing the column Research You Can Use. He directs the Metropolitan Research Center at the University of Utah. He holds master’s degrees in Engineering and City Planning from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Transportation Systems from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A recent citation analysis found that Ewing, with 24,000 citations, is the 6th most highly cited among 1,100 planning academic planners in North America.

Keunhyun Park, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at Utah State University. He holds master’s degrees in Landscape Architecture from Seoul National University and a Ph.D. in Metropolitan Planning, Policy, Design from the University of Utah. His research interests include technology-driven behavioral research (e.g., drone, VR/AR, sensor, etc.), behavioral outcomes of smart growth, and active living.