5 Things You Need to Know about Statistics: Quantification in Ethnographic Research

William W Dressler

Mar 2015 · Left Coast Press

About this ebook

The 5 Things You Need to Know about Statistics provides an accessible introduction to statistical thinking for anthropologists and other social scientists who feel some mixture of dread and loathing when it comes to quantification and data analysis. It is not so much an introduction to statistics as a primer on how to think statistically in order to do precise ethnographic studies. Readers will be empowered by the realization that statistics is not an arcane, enigmatical science but a set of tools for learning about the world in which we live. Unlike other books on statistics for beginners, this book
-guides readers through the underlying logic of the major statistical methods before applying those methods in interpreting ethnographic research, thus emphasizing understanding of quantitative methods;
-uses a single data set in explaining each method, allowing readers to grasp how different methods offer varying interpretations of the data;
-discusses increasingly complex techniques in plain, easy-to-understand language intended for beginning students.;
-covers five central ideas : central tendency, dispersion, Chi-square, ANOVA, correlation;
-shows readers how to use these quantitative statistical methods in doing real-life ethnographic fieldwork.

About the author

William W. Dressler, professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama, is a medical anthropologist with interests in culture theory, community studies, research methods, and the relationship between culture and disease. He has adapted models of psychosocial stress to examine the association between social and cultural factors and the risk of chronic disease, including cardiovascular disease. His recent work emphasizes concepts and methods needed to evaluate the health effects of individual efforts to achieve culturally defined goals and aspirations, and he has helped develop research methods for the study of connections among cultural, individual, and biological spheres. His research has been conducted in settings as diverse as urban Great Britain, the Southeast U.S., the West Indies, Mexico, and Samoa.