A Layperson’s Guide to Understanding Research and Data Analysis

About the Book

This book is written for busy people who need to understand the information that is flooding them and find ways to interpret it. You may be a business executive, a medical doctor, a stay-at-home mother or father wanting to understand the Gallup poll results in the daily newspaper, or a student studying nursing, counseling, psychology, sociology, or even mathematics. Yet you need to quickly be brought into the world of research and data analysis. It does not require that you dedicate a year of your life to take a course in social-science research and quantitative data analysis. In fact, this book will not have formulas or require you to calculate mathematical functions. But you do need to have the dedication to try to understand what might be considered another language. You can do it at a pace that suits your lifestyle. You might want to take a look at the index at the end of the book to see if there are any terms you’ve been interested in or wondered about. It is very nontraditional in that its focus is on the concepts behind these processes rather than asking you to learn formulas and how to calculate data. If you have a desire to learn more about what is going on, there are many excellent texts in the references.

About the Author

Dr. Bruce loves to learn. In fact, she has dedicated her life to learning, teaching, and analyzing data for many organizations. She earned a BA in psychology and MA in counseling from Chico State University in California. She then earned an EdD from the University of California at Berkeley with a focus on measurement and quantitative methods in educational psychology. Out of an interest for spirituality and metaphysics, she earned a PhD in integral energy medicine from Holos graduate school. She worked for twenty-eight years at Sonoma State University in Northern California starting as the psychometrist and ending up as the associate vice president for institutional research. She also holds a black belt in Kodenkan Jujitsu. She enjoys cooking, gardening, playing the piano, and spending time with her family and friends.