Social Statistics for a Diverse Society
- Chava Frankfort-Nachmias - University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA
- Anna Leon-Guerrero - Pacific Lutheran University
- Georgiann Davis - University of New Mexico, USA
This bestselling text introduces students to social statistics and their importance in the workplace, in the media, and in being able to conduct or interpret research. The text integrates statistical techniques with a wide range of social issues related to the dynamic interplay of race, class, gender, and other social variables: students become proficient in statistical techniques while learning about social differences and inequality through substantive examples and real-world data. The authors use straightforward language to explain statistical concepts and emphasize intuition, logic, and common sense over rote memorization and derivation of formulas. The Tenth Edition includes fresh topical examples and exercises, as well as new General Social Survey datasets with step-by-step SPSS and Excel video demonstrations. The text is available for the first time in full color and in Sage's award-winning Vantage learning platform.
Our learning goals are accomplished through a variety of specific and distinctive features throughout this book.
A Close Link Between the Practice of Statistics, Important Social Issues, and Real-World Examples. This book is distinct for its integration of statistical techniques with pressing social issues of particular concern to society and social science. We emphasize how the conduct of social science is the constant interplay between social concerns and methods of inquiry. In addition, the examples throughout the book—mostly taken from news stories, government reports, public opinion polls, scholarly research, and the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey—are formulated to emphasize to students like you that we live in a world in which statistical arguments are common. Statistical concepts and procedures are illustrated with real data and research, providing a clear sense of how questions about important social issues can be studied with various statistical techniques.
A Focus on Diversity: The United States and International. A strong emphasis on race, class, and gender as central substantive concepts is mindful of a trend in the social sciences toward integrating issues of diversity in the curriculum. This focus on the richness of social differences within our society and our global neighbors is manifested in the application of statistical tools to examine how race, class, gender, and other categories of experience shape our social world and explain social behavior. For this edition, we also include data from the International Social Survey Program (2019) and the World Values Survey (2022).
Chapter Content. Each revision presents many opportunities to polish and expand the content of our text. We have streamlined each chapter with main headings and revised chapter learning objectives. End-of-chapter practice problems have been organized into three sections: SPSS, Excel, and Chapter Exercise calculation and application problems. Several new Data at Work profiles are included in this edition.
Reading the Research Literature, Statistics in Practice, and A Closer Look. In your student career and in the workplace, you may be expected to read and interpret statistical information presented by others in professional and scholarly publications. These statistical analyses are a good deal more complex than most class and textbook presentations. To guide you in reading and interpreting research reports written by social scientists, most of our chapters include a Reading the Research Literature and a Statistics in Practice feature, presenting excerpts of published research reports or specific SPSS calculations using the statistical concepts under discussion. Being statistically literate involves more than just completing a calculation; it also includes learning how to apply and interpret statistical information and being able to say what it means. We include an A Closer Look discussion in each chapter, advising students about the common errors and limitations in quantitative data collection and analysis.
SPSS, Excel, and GSS 2021. IBM® SPSS® Statistics1 and Microsoft Excel2 are used throughout this book, although the use of computers is not required to learn from the text. Real data are used to motivate and make concrete the coverage of statistical topics. As a companion to the tenth edition’s SPSS and Excel demonstrations and exercises, we provide three GSS 2021 data sets on the study site at http://edge.sagepub.com/frankfort10e. Two of the GSS data sets (GSS21SSDS-A and GSS21SSDS-B) are formatted for SPSS, while the third data set (GSS21SSDS-E) is ready for use in Excel. These demonstrations and exercises at the end of each chapter rely on variables from these modules. There is ample opportunity for instructors to develop their own exercises using these data.