Statistical Methods for Social Scientists

The aspects of this text which we believe are novel, at least in degree, include: an effort to motivate different sections with practical examples and an empirical orientation; an effort to intersperse several easily motivated examples throughout the book and to maintain some continuity in these examples; and the extensive use of Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate particular aspects of the problems and estimators being considered. In terms of material being presented, the unique aspects include the first chapter which attempts to address the use of empirical methods in the social sciences, the seventh chapter which considers models with discrete dependent variables and unobserved variables. Clearly these last two topics in particular are quite advanced--more advanced than material that is currently available on the subject. These last two topics are also currently experiencing rapid development and are not adequately described in most other texts.

Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He is internationally recognized for his economic analysis of educational issues, and his research has had broad influence on education policy in both developed and developing countries. He received the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021. He is the author of numerous widely-cited studies on the effects of class size reduction, school accountability, teacher effectiveness, and other topics. He was the first to research teacher effectiveness by measuring students’ learning gains, which forms the conceptual basis for using value-added measures to evaluate teachers and schools, now a widely adopted practice. His recent book with Ludger Woessmann, The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth summarizes research establishing the close links between countries’ long-term rates of economic growth and the skill levels of their populations. He has authored or edited twenty-five books along with over 300 articles. He is a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and completed his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. hanushek@stanford.edu; http://hanushek.stanford.edu/