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Chapter 1 1.1 Goals of this book We have a number of goals in this book. The first is to provide an introduction to how to use the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for data analysis. The text includes step-by-step instructions, along with screen shots and videos, to conduct various procedures in SPSS to perform statistical data analysis. However, another goal is to show how SPSS is actually used to understand and interpret the results of research. Thus, we will also discuss the meaning of the data analyses introduced in this text, as well as how a researcher would write these interpretations to present results to others. This text is designed to be a supplement to undergraduate and graduate courses in statistics and research methods. As such, we do not provide detailed instructions about statistics and methods, leaving that for the respective primary courses. Although each chapter is designed to be easily accessible to the beginner, we understand that there may be large differences in background with computers, research and statistics. We will assume that you have basic knowledge and experience in these areas. However, if you have minimal experience with computers, research or statistics, we recommend that you read the Appendix, in which we explain some of the basics for the novice. |