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SPSS 14 Made Simple
by Paul R. Kinnear, Colin D. Gray
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Psychology Press Ltd (2007-11-01)
ISBN: 184169651X
EAN: 9781841696515
Dewy Decimal #: 005.55
Paperback: 569 pages
SKU: B915-B-1005
Condition: New
Comments: New & Shrinkwrapped. In stock - Immediate despatch from an efficient and professional leading British bookselling firm.
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Customer Reviews
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Fantastic for learning how to use SPSS, but I struggled with the maths behind it
Rating  (3)
Date: 2007-02-13
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
I sat down on a week of annual leave with the intention of getting a decent basic grasp of how to use SPSS. For those purposes, Kinnear and Gray's SPSS 14.0 was fantastic. It walked me through what I needed to know, and laid out how to produce and interpret the data SPSS produced.
This would - I feel - be an outstanding book for anyone who already has a decent understanding of the principles / mathematics behind statistics but is looking to pick up SPSS as a tool. Alternatively, it would probably be great for anyone who's prepared to skip over the maths bits and doesn't need they feel an understanding of the underlying principles - but is again looking for SPSS as a technical tool with which they can produce and interpret tables.
My - personal - struggle was with the theory behind what I was doing; I wanted to gain a holistic understanding of what I was doing, and why I was doing it. As the book progressed, though, I felt like I was becoming little more than a technician without an understanding of the basic mathematical principles underlying the statistics I produced. Whilst I'm fairly adept at picking up new information and grasping new concepts (mathematical or otherwise), I really struggled with the presentation of mathematical equations and information at a depth and in a form that was - bluntly - beyond me.
I felt like I was walked through some great stuff on how to work with SPSS (and could comfortably work through and pick up 20-30 pages of SPSS procedures in an hour or two) then - BANG - suddenly a massive wadge of formulae, equations, and alarming statistics would turn up and I'd be baffled for the next four hours barely covering half a page.
My highest maths-based qualification is - admittedly - only an A in GCSE maths some years back, but for me this felt like a book that was quite definitely not aimed at the complete layman. For anyone else, however (or for anyone not interested in the maths and willing to skip those pages) - great stuff.
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