ABSTRACT

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.

part 1|15 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|14 pages

The methods used in psychological research

part 2|45 pages

Choice of topic, measures and research design

chapter 2|13 pages

The preliminary stages of research

part 3|30 pages

Methods

chapter 5|12 pages

Asking questions I

Interviews and surveys

chapter 6|10 pages

Asking questions II

Measuring attitudes and meaning

chapter 7|7 pages

Observation and content analysis

part 4|288 pages

Data and analysis

chapter 8|6 pages

Scales of measurement

chapter 9|27 pages

Summarising and describing data

chapter 10|8 pages

Going beyond description

chapter 11|9 pages

Samples and populations

chapter 13|7 pages

Effect size and power

chapter 14|8 pages

Parametric and non-parametric tests

chapter 18|24 pages

Subsequent analysis after ANOVA or χ2

chapter 19|29 pages

Analysis of relationships I

Correlation

chapter 20|24 pages

Analysis of relationships II

Linear regression

chapter 21|12 pages

Analysis of relationships III

Logistic regression

chapter 22|14 pages

Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA)

chapter 23|7 pages

Screening data

chapter 24|13 pages

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)

chapter 25|10 pages

Multivariate analysis

chapter 26|10 pages

Meta-analysis

chapter 27|7 pages

Bayesian statistics

part 5|20 pages

Sharing the results

chapter 28|19 pages

Reporting research