4th Edition

Quantitative Psychological Research The Complete Student's Companion

By David Clark-Carter Copyright 2019
    742 Pages
    by Routledge

    742 Pages
    by Routledge

    Quantitative Psychological Research: The Complete Student's Companion expertly guides the reader through all the stages involved in undertaking quantitative psychological research: designing a study, choosing a sample of people, undertaking the study, analysing the data, and reporting the research.

    Accessibly written and clearly presented, the book is designed for anyone learning to conduct quantitative psychological research. It covers the full research process, from the original idea to reporting the completed study, emphasising the importance of looking beyond statistical significance in evaluating data. The book provides step-by-step guidance on choosing, interpreting and reporting the appropriate analysis, featuring worked examples and extended calculations as appendices for advanced readers.

    This edition features new chapters on exploratory factor analysis, logistic regression and Bayesian statistics, and has been thoroughly updated throughout to reflect the latest research practices. Care has been taken to avoid tying the book to any specific statistical software, providing readers with a thorough grounding in the basics no matter which package they go on to use.

    Whether you’re at the beginning of your undergraduate degree or working towards your masters or doctorate, this book will be invaluable for anyone looking to understand how to conduct quantitative psychological research.

    Contents

    Detailed contents of chapters

    Preface

    Part 1

    Introduction

    1 The methods used in psychological research

    Part 2

    Choice of topic, measures and research design

    2 The preliminary stages of research

    3 Variables and the validity of research designs

    4 Research designs and their internal validity

    Part 3

    Methods

    5 Asking questions I: interviews and surveys

    6 Asking questions II: measuring attitudes and meaning

    7 Observation and content analysis

    Part 4

    Data and analysis

    8 Scales of measurement

    9 Summarising and describing data

    10 Going beyond description

    11 Samples and populations

    12 Analysis of differences between a single sample and a population

    13 Effect size and power

    14 Parametric and non-parametric tests

    15 Analysis of differences between two levels of an independent variable

    16 Preliminary analysis of designs with one independent variable with
    more than two levels

    17 Analysis of designs with more than one independent variable

    18 Subsequent analysis after ANOVA or χ2

    19 Analysis of relationships I: correlation

    20 Analysis of relationships II: linear regression

    21 Analysis of relationships III: logistic regression

    22 Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA)

    23 Screening data

    24 Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)

    25 Multivariate analysis

    26 Meta-analysis

    27 Bayesian statistics

    Part 5

    Sharing the results

    28 Reporting research

    Appendixes

    I. Descriptive statistics

    (linked to Chapter 9)

    II. Sampling and confidence intervals for proportions

    (linked to Chapter 11)

    III. Comparing a sample with a population

    (linked to Chapter 12)

    IV. The power of a one-group z-test

    (linked to Chapter 13)

    V. Data transformation and goodness-of-fit tests

    (linked to Chapter 14)

    VI. Seeking differences between two levels of an independent variable

    (linked to Chapter 15)

    VII. Seeking differences between more than two levels of an independent variable (linked to Chapter 16)

    VIII. Analysis of designs with more than one independent variable

    (linked to Chapter 17)

    IX. Subsequent analysis after ANOVA or χ2

    (linked to Chapter 18)

    X. Correlation and reliability

    (linked to Chapter 19)

    XI. Linear regression

    (linked to Chapter 20)

    XII. Logistic regression

    (linked to Chapter 21)

    XIII. ANCOVA

    (linked to Chapter 22)

    XIV. Evaluation of measures: item and discriminative analysis, and accuracy of tests

    (linked to Chapter 6)

    XV. Exploratory Factor Analysis

    (linked to Chapter 24)

    XVI. Meta-analysis

    (linked to Chapter 26)

    XVII. Probability tables

    XVIII. Power tables

    XIX. Miscellaneous tables

    References

    Glossary of symbols

    Author index

    Subject index

    Biography

    David Clark-Carter is Emeritus Professor at Staffordshire University and Consultant Editor of the British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology. In 2016 he was awarded the lifetime achievement award by the Education and Public Engagement Board of the British Psychological Society.

    'Clark-Carter has done an excellent job in updating this much-used textbook. The book should be an essential part of a university student’s reading at undergraduate level and a much-needed reference book at postgraduate level.

    'The book provides a step-by-step guide to research that students and researchers will find extremely useful. This fourth edition provides consistently outstanding coverage of the core principles of psychological research. An informative and reader-friendly book.'

    –Dr Zaheer Hussain, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Derby, UK