Using Microsoft Excel for Social Research
- Charlotte Brookfield - Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
Providing step-by-step instructions for how to use Microsoft Excel for doing statistics, Charlotte Brookfield discusses different stages of the research process, from first planning to writing and presenting your research. With a focus on conducting robust data analysis, the book is reassuring, clear and straightforward, helping you to:
· Learn important data skills, such as preparing, cleaning and managing data
· Reduce anxiety about approaching statistics and quantitative data
· Boost your employability, showing you how to develop transferable skills, such as effective time management.
Whether you’re learning data skills for the first time or translating your statistics knowledge from other software, this book will help you successfully carry out social research in any setting with confidence, via an engaging pedagogy that includes: colour-coded chapters by difficulty, activities, 'Remember' boxes, further reading and skills checklists.
Supplements
This is an invaluable resource for people learning statistics. Brookfield provides a clear, accessible and engaging introduction to using Excel to explore, analyze and report quantitative data.
It makes perfect sense to train our students in Microsoft Excel: not only does the programme have increased functionality for social research, but it is also a staple in many graduate workplaces. This text is distinct from other Excel help guides in that it is explicitly designed around the social research process and with undergraduate students in mind. Using real-life datasets and tools such as ‘reminder boxes’, it is a highly comprehensive, engaging and accessible resource for introductory quantitative research methods modules.
This is the book I have been waiting for. We have learned that employers value Excel and that many small workplaces cannot afford SPSS licences. This covers everything we would do in SPSS (possibly excepting recoding variables). Sold.