Further statistics and choosing statistical tests

Welcome to The Methods Workbook Website

This web site is designed to accompany The Survey Methods Workbook.  Here you will find an array of material – including chapters, guides and data files – designed to help you get the best from the book and to enable you to take your understanding of survey methods to a higher level.  The website is divided into seven sections.  Click on the relevant link to enter the section:

Section 1: Summary of findings

The Survey Methods Workbook has covered the design of a survey, its execution, and the analysis of results, but the final stage is missing – the write-up.  In this section you will find our brief summary of the key findings from the Smoking Survey.  Each hypothesis is examined in the light of the data analysis presented in the chapters in Part III, as well as the additional appendices included on the web site.

This section contains all the material (data files, questionnaire and codebook) you will need if you want to replicate the Smoking Survey by doing your own survey, or if you want to work on our data. 

Section 3: Issues in research design

There are two appendices that can be downloaded from this section of the website covering aspects of research design.  One considers longitudinal survey design while the other looks at class schemas and how they are coded 

Section 4: Further statistics and choosing statistical tests

This section deals in more detail with some statistical issues discussed in part III of the book including how to standardize variables, what the binomial distribution is and guidance on choosing the appropriate statistical tests.  

Section 5: Further techniques in data analysis 

Here you will find a number of additional appendices dealing with more advanced techniques of data analysis than those covered in this book including: Principal Components (Factor) analysis, Path models, Logistic regression and Loglinear modelling.

Section 6: Guide to further reading 

For those of you who wish to read about topics covered in the book in greater depth, in this section of the web site you will find a guide to suggested further reading.

Find out about old and new versions of SPSS and how they may affect your survey project.  There are links to useful and related sites such as the ONS, ESRC Data Archive, and organizations which can offer background material on smoking. Also, data sets and supporting research materials submitted by those who have replicated the Smoking Survey can be accessed here.

This section is currently under construction.  Please check back soon!