Graziano & Raulin
Research Methods (9th edition)
Statistical Analyses
This textbook website includes tutorials on most of the basic statistical analyses, from computation of descriptive statistics to the computation and interpretation of rather complex inferential statistics.
This module is not designed to replace a statistics course, but rather to cover the nuts and bolts of using statistical procedures in the interpretation of data from research studies. We supplement this practical hands-on coverage with coverage of the concepts that underlie statistical analyses, which can be found elsewhere on the website. We have also include a functional flowchart system on this website, which helps you to select the appropriate statistical procedures based on the characteristics of the research study and then links you to the instructional resources on this website for computing those statistics.
There are two sections to this module. The first covers that computation of statistical procedures using SPSS for Windows. This statistical analysis program is the most widely-used PC-based statistical package. If you have access to SPSS for Windows, you will find this tutorial most helpful. Many of the data sets used for illustration were drawn from the textbook, and therefore will be familiar. Even if you plan to use another statistical analysis program, you will find it helpful to spend a couple of hours going through this tutorial because it will highlight general principles in statistical analysis.
We have also included tutorials on the manual computation of several commonly-used statistical procedures. Although we do not recommend the routine manual computation of statistics, because the task is so labor intensive, instructors often want their students to compute statistics once or twice by hand to get a feel for how the procedures work. It is for this reason that we have included these tutorials. In addition, sometimes it is helpful to see that procedures that might take an hour or more to conduct by hand can be set up and completed in minutes or even seconds with a well-designed statistical package. Because the manual computation of statistics require the use of statistical tables, we have included the most commonly-used tables into this module.
Our illustrative examples with SPSS for Windows often use data sets that were included in the textbook. To save you the time of entering those data sets, we have included the data files online for you.
To access either the SPSS for Windows or manual computation tutorials, click on the buttons below. We have also included practice exercises, complete with feedback. The statistical tables can be accessed from either the manual computation tutorials or by clicking on the button below.