Easy Statistics in Psychology: A BPS Guide

This is a decent book on the topic of Statistics. Although I took an intensive workshop in stats and a course on descriptive stats I was oriented more to Qualitative research methods such as ethnography and discourse analysis. I finally came around when taking a personality psychology course through the British Psychological Society. I examined this book online and found it reasonable to read. Many books on statistics are written by statisticians who, like many IT people, have a hard time explaining to mere mortal what they do. I bought the book this past fall. When I started reading the book I realized and appreciated that Forshaw explains complicated statistics concepts in plain English and thankfully does a good job of it.

Don't waste your money! I bought this book the summer before I began taking advanced statistics in psychology. The book was basically useless and has many errors. I took it to my statistics professor and she was shocked with the inaccuracies of the book (I even lent it to her for a week). I told her I would sell it at my garage sale and she said, "don't bother" as it would be equally misleading for the next unfortunate student who stumbles across it!

I stumbled across this book in a public library by accident and thank godness i did! This is an absolutely excellent book for anyone who is not familiar with statistics when embarking on a Psychology degree or any other degree requiring stats.I often found in my lectures that the Lecturers would talk about 'Variance', 'ANOVAs', 'T-Tests' etc, often in relation to commands on SPSS, without actually explaining the fundamental basics of what these tests meant and what they were looking at. Therefore, i found myself running through 'steps' with statistics without really understanidng what i was doing. That is where this book came in - it explains everything simply but effectively and, once reading, i felt like for the first time i actually understood the 'point' of the tests and what they were looking at. I found myself feeling alot more comfortable with statistics and even explaining the tests to others using the analogies from the book. The book gives you a sound basis for understanding and using statistical tests using plain English and ,once you read this, stuff starts making a whole lot more sense!I now have my own copy of this book which, despite having graduated, i still refer to whenever i have to perform any stats in my job. My only regret is that i didnt discover it sooner!

I think this may be the first "5-star" review I've made! An excellent little book. The writer clearly has a "light touch" in the exposition of his subject, without being superficial. I enjoyed the various analogies he utilised and the sense of humour he deployed on a number of occasions. It may well be that the purist would look for more mathematical gymnastics but the book is precisely to avoid that trap which so often ensnares others. This is in fact a very encouraging tome, one that will inspire a degree of confidence to indeed explore the subject a bit more, if one is so inclined. All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable read; I can well imagine that Martin Forshaw's lectures would be uniquely inspiring too!

I bought this book in desperation facing a year of stats lectures that were going completely over my head. This book has been great in giving a very down to earth explanation of what the terms mean and how they can really be used. If I had one criticism, it's that it lacks some depth in places, but I reckon for those bits I'm interested in, I can look to more in-depth texts.