Doing quantitative psychological research : from design to report

This book has four aspects which together make it unique. Firstly, it takes the reader through all the stages of research from design, through conduct, analysis and interpretation to reporting the research, including advice on presenting a paper or a poster at a conference. Secondly, it describes a wide range of methods and although it concentrates on quantitative approaches, it also briefly describes a number of qualitative methods. Thirdly, the coverage of statistical techniques is thorough but the way in which they are described is designed for the reader who will do the analysis by computer. Accordingly, the techniques are presented in as non-mathematical a way as possible, with the emphasis on choosing the appropriate test and interpreting and reporting the results. Nonetheless, formulae, worked examples and more complex material are contained in extensive appendixes. Fourthly, the importance of statistical power and effect size is stressed, with guidelines on how to choose an appropriate sample size for most of the statistical tests covered in the book. These include a wide range of both parametric and non-parametric tests. The book concentrates on univariate statistics - such as t-tests, ANOVA and Multiple Regression - and bi-variate statistics - such as correlation - but also includes a chapter which describes multivariate techniques to give the reader an idea of when they can be used.