The Essentials of Political Analysis

“With its carefully organized material, hands-on running examples, and accessible writing style, The Essentials of Political Analysis introduces readers to the foundational principles of research in Political Science in a natural and fluid fashion.  It effectively conveys to students the idea that the methods we use in Political Science research are crucial in providing answers to real world political and social questions.  The chapters on inference in particular are extremely well executed.”

“Overall, this is the best political science research methods book I’ve seen. It is brief yet covers the methodological basics of quantitative research design from concept development to difference of means, chi-square, and linear regression.  It is detailed, yet comprehensible.  Best of all, the companion text offers quality datasets and walk-throughs of SPSS that bring every concept here to life.  Combined, The Essentials of Political Analysis and An SPSS Companion to Political Analysis form the backbone of our undergraduate research methods teaching.”  

“Overall, this is the best political science research methods book I’ve seen.”

-William Field, Rutgers University

Building students’ analytic abilities and developing their statistical reasoning with new data, fresh exercises, and engaging examples, this accessible introduction to the essential elements of political analysis walks students through the basics—measuring concepts, describing variables, formulating and testing hypotheses, controlling for alternative explanations, and interpreting graphic displays, and nearly 50 practical exercises motivate them to use their new skills with confidence.

New to this edition:

• All examples updated with current data sources
• Treatment of visual depictions of variables and relationships and enhanced coverage of logistic regression
• A total of 48 end-of-chapter exercises, many new or completely revised
• More accessible discussion of spurious, additive, and interaction relationships
• Coverage of box plots and error bar charts
• New discussion of ways to represent probabilities in logistic regression