Making Sense of Statistical Methods in Social Research

Making Sense of Statistical Methods in Social Research is a critical introduction to the use of statistical methods in social research. It provides a unique approach to statistics that concentrates on helping social researchers think about the conceptual basis for the statistical methods they′re using.

Whereas other statistical methods books instruct students in how to get through the statistics-based elements of their chosen course with as little mathematical knowledge as possible, this book aims to improve students′ statistical literacy, with the ultimate goal of turning them into competent researchers.

Making Sense of Statistical Methods in Social Research contains careful discussion of the conceptual foundation of statistical methods, specifying what questions they can, or cannot, answer. The logic of each statistical method or procedure is explained, drawing on the historical development of the method, existing publications that apply the method, and methodological discussions. Statistical techniques and procedures are presented not for the purpose of showing how to produce statistics with certain software packages, but as a way of illuminating the underlying logic behind the symbols.

The limited statistical knowledge that students gain from straight forward ′how-to′ books makes it very hard for students to move beyond introductory statistics courses to postgraduate study and research. This book should help to bridge this gap.

Dr Keming Yang is currently an Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Durham in the UK. He was born and grew up in the city of Tianjin, People’s Republic of China. He studied sociology at Nankai University and worked there for three years before going to study for a PhD at Columbia University in the US. His first job after receiving the PhD was at National University of Singapore. He then took a position at University of Reading in the UK and moved to the current position at Durham. His first research area is the political and economic sociology of entrepreneurship in China, in which he published two books, Entrepreneurship in China and Capitalists in Communist China, and some articles. Since working at University of Durham, he has been working on the issue of loneliness from a sociological perspective. He is the author of Loneliness: A Social Problem and many articles on this topic. He also has research interest in research methods in the social sciences, and he is the author of Making Sense of Statistics in Social Research and the editor of Categorical Data Analysis.