Statistics 1 and 2

Book Description
Author

Caspar J. Van Lissa

Overview

This GitBook covers the basics of statistics and data analysis. The ability to extract insights from data is an essential skill for both academic and non-academic work, and “data literacy” is increasingly important in a world where data are collected about every aspect of our lives. In this book, you will be able to independently analyze data, interpret and report your findings, and assess the results of analyses performed by others, such as you might find in scientific articles.

Learning goals

This book covers the following learning goals:

  1. compute and interpret commonly used descriptive statistics such as the sample mean, the median, the mode, variance and standard deviation, the standard error, and the correlation coefficient.
  2. recognize different probability distributions such as the normal distribution, and make computations for these probability distributions.
  3. explain the essential aspects of null-hypothesis significance testing, including sampling distributions, Type I and Type II errors, one-tailed versus two-tailed testing, and statistical power.
  4. apply different statistical tests such as the Z-test, the one sample t-test, the one way Between Subjects Analysis of Variance test, and statistical tests related to (multiple) linear regression analysis with continuous and categorical predictors; and clarify the statistical and/or methodological assumptions that apply to the techniques that are discussed in this course.
  5. explain basic concepts in regression analysis, including: linear association, least-squares estimation, explained variance, Multiple R, multiple correlation, adjusted R-square, raw and standardized regression coefficients, model-comparison tests, predicted scores, residuals and the assumptions;
  6. choose the appropriate analysis technique for answering a specific research problem from the range of techniques that are covered in the course.
  7. use the software package SPSS to perform several statistical data analyses and be able to correctly interpret and report the output to an informed audience (e.g., Liberal arts students, researchers from the social sciences/business and economics/cognitive neuroscience).
  8. draw valid conclusions from the results of empirical data analyses given specific research questions envisaged.
  9. apply statistical tests in the context of multiple linear regression models with interaction terms and logistic regression models; interpret the corresponding output.
  10. describe the concepts of probabilities, odds and logits; describe the relationship between the three scales; transform one into another (formulae are provided).
  11. apply statistical tests in the context of factorial ANOVA, ANCOVA and Analysis of Repeated measures; interpret the corresponding output; and calculate and interpret effect size estimates relevant for these statistical techniques (e.g., (partial) eta squared)
  12. apply statistical tests in the context of multiple linear regression models with interaction terms and interpret the corresponding output.
  13. gauge the reliability of measurements from questionnaires and identify problematic items.
  14. explore the dimensionality of questionnaire data.

Using this GitBook

This GitBook is “Open Educational Material”. It is intended to replace conventional statistics textbooks, for free.

All essential information is contained within this GitBook. To ensure that you always have access to the GitBook, it is recommended that you download it to your local computer as follows:

  1. Go to https://github.com/cjvanlissa/stats12
  2. Click the green Code button
  3. Select “Download ZIP” (see figure below)
  4. Save the ZIP archive to your drive
  5. Right-click the downloaded file, and select “Extract here” (or similar option, depending on your operating system)
  6. You should now have a folder with the contents of the book.
  7. To launch the book in your browser, open the file docs\index.html.
  8. The “data” folder contains all SPSS datasets you need for the course.
  9. The “pdfs” folder contains all PDF files you need for the course.

It is possible that the book will be updated during the course. If this happens, I will notify you via Canvas to re-download the book.

Contributing / Fixing Errors

This book is a work in progress, so you might find errors. Please help me fix them! The best way is to open an issue on github that describes the error. You are also welcome to suggest fixes directly by opening a pull request, if you know how to.

Software

By default, it is assumed that you will be making the exercises in this book using the commercial program ‘SPSS’.

It is important to note that there are free alternatives to SPSS; you might consider using these on your own computer, instead of buying a license for SPSS:

Credit

This book was authored by Caspar J. Van Lissa. Its code and layout are derived from Lisa DeBruine’s “booktem” (DeBruine & Lakens, n.d.).

Also see: https://psyteachr.github.io/