Providing a strong conceptual foundation, The Essentials of Political Analysis walks students through the basics--measuring concepts, formulating and testing hypotheses, describing variables--and then, through a companion SPSS volume with easy-to-use canned data sets, prepares them to apply what they learn immediately on the computer. The author's engaging and straightforward prose clearly introduces key terms and concepts while chapter-opening objectives cue students to learning goals. Over eighty tables and ?gures enhance important textual material. Class-tested chapter exercises promote skill application and aid student review.
Fans of Pollock's practical introduction to the methods course will appreciate the second edition's many improvements, from more comparative and international material to a brand new chapter on logistic regression. Introducing students to one of the discipline's most widely used statistical tools, students learn the logic of logistic regression, maximum likelihood estimation and how to convert logits into probabilities.
