An SPSS Companion to Political Analysis

In his popular workbook, An SPSS Companion to Political Analysis*, Philip H. Pollock III gets students using actual political data and working with a software tool that prepares them for future political science courses.

Now updated using SPSS 16.0, the new third edition is a no-nonsense and friendly introduction to using SPSS: students learn through a series of guided examples, reference 120 screenshots, and can count on step-by-step instructions to all procedures. As in previous editions, the workbook covers the full array of data analysis procedures from introductory to advanced, including descriptive statistics and data transformations, to dummy variables and interaction effects. A final chapter shows students how to code data and how to read it into SPSS. 

With 50% more exercises than in the previous edition, students not only interact with a range of substantive political science questions, but encounter more exercises on comparative and international politics, investigating such topics as the relative importance of cultural and institutional factors in shaping political parties or the extent to which wealth is equally distributed within countries.

The third edition also delves deeper into the use of graphic display to complement empirical results. Students learn state of the art editing techniques using SPSS Chart Editor, while following protocols described by leading experts in the graphic display of quantitative information. In addition to creating simple bar charts and line graphs, students will learn to produce scatterplots and logistic regression curves.

The datasets have been thoroughly updated and expanded, and include a set for student version users. A solutions manual with answers to all of the exercises is available to adopters.

Also available in a discounted package with The Essentials of Political Analysis, 2nd Edition. Order ISBN 978-1-60426-456-2 for the package.

Watch for the new third edition of The Essentials of Political Analysis in October!

 

*SPSS was acquired by IBM in October 2009

Philip H. Pollock III is a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida. He has taught courses in research methods at the undergraduate and graduate levels for more than thirty years. His main research interests are American public opinion, voting behavior, techniques of quantitative analysis, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. His recent research has been on the effectiveness of Internet-based instruction. Pollock’s research has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Social Science Quarterly, and the British Journal of Political Science. Recent scholarly publications include articles in Political Research Quarterly, the Journal of Political Science Education, and PS: Political Science and Politics.