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Babbie, Wagner and Zaino 2019
[New page 11 April 2020: last updated 17 May 2020]
Earl Babbie, William E Wagner III and Jeanne Zaino
Adventures in Social Research: Data Analysis Using IBM SPSS Statistics
(10th edition, Sage 2019)
The best ever textbook for SPSS and survey analysis was Norusis 1987 (no longer available). This new book is by far the best buy of all the other SPSS textbooks reviewed on this site.
For full review see: Review_of_Babbie_Wagner_and_Zaino_2019 (pdf, 3pp, 239 kb)
Paperback is a hefty £65 from Sage UK: $43 from Sage US. Slightly cheaper from Amazon Kindle, Google Play, ebooks.com and Kobo.
It comes in A4 format (297 mm x 210 mm) with 478 pages (two prefaces, 22 chapters, two appendices and an Index/glossary) and weighs 495 grams, Not easy to read in an armchair: you’ll probably need a lectern!
There are 3 holes drilled right through the book and perforations along the edge of each page so that pages can be separated and kept in separate folder. This could be fun if students are sharing a copy!
Particularly oriented to survey research, it uses SPSS 24 and data from the 2016 wave of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) General Social Survey (GSS) covering contemporary issues of genuine interest to students in Sociology and related disciplines (abortion, religion, political attitudes, social inequality and gender issues).
It uses the Graphic User Interface (GUI) exclusively: no syntax at all. (“Syntax” doesn’t even appear in the Index). I much prefer syntax to the GUI, but otherwise it fits perfectly into the pedagogical approach followed in the self-teaching course on this site:
Survey Analysis Workshop (SPSS) One minor niggle is that all their tables are displayed with column percentages (with 100% total at the bottom, as beloved by statisticians and accountants). I prefer tables with row percentages which are much easier to compare, especially when using elaboration techniques.
The book has a companion website which I have so far been unable to penetrate, probably because I have not bought the book myself.
Commentary on SPSS files used in Babbie, Wagner and Zaino (pdf, 26 pp, 1.08 kb) is an account, which I hope will be helpful to any teachers, students or researchers wishing to use the book, giving detailed instructions on how to create the necessary files.
As downloaded via the NORC GSS page Get the Data, file GSS2016.SAV (11.3 mb) has 2867 cases and 961 variables (in alphabetical order, except for MAR1 to MAR14 at the beginning). It is not possible to reproduce exactly the two SPSS data sets used in the book, DEMO.SAV (44 variables) and EXER.SAV (46 variables). However, I downloaded the SPSS file GSS2016.SAV from NORC and have created, from scratch, two data sets (7.4 mb each) demo.sav and exer.sav containing the same variables as in the book, but with a different sample of 1500 cases. Each file contains the same 1500 cases. This means that the Ns in tables will differ slightly from those in the book. There is some overlap of variables between the two (a combined total of 69 variables).
I have also prepared DEMOGRAD.SAV and EXERGRAD.SAV, each with the same 500 cases. for use with the Gradpack version of SPSS, which is limited to 50 variables and 500 cases. Since NORC data sets are freely available, I have asked NORC for permission to upload the above files so that they are downloadable from this site. The SPSS setup files used to extract the data will be uploaded to this site or will be listed as full text in a later commentary. All GUI exercises in the book will have associated *.sps files in the commentary.
In my SPSS tutorials I work with files in which variables are in questionnaire order and I advise users to work with a hard copy of the questionnaire to hand (or at least a facsimile pdf on screen alongside SPSS Data Editor). This makes it easier to navigate both.
The GSS Help and Resources page has much useful information, but I could find nothing on the 2016 questionnaire as the Database entries only go as far as 2014.
I sent a copy of the commentary to the GSS Team at NORC and asked for help in tracing the 2016 questionnaire and offering to provide data files and commentaries for use on their site. Despite the Covid-19 lock-down, they replied immediately:
"All of this work is excellent! We publish the single-year questionnaires, not on the GSS Data Explorer, but on the GSS project website, here:
http://gss.norc.org/Get-Documentation/questionnaires.
This will contain a slightly modified extract of the CAPI which was used for data collection, and allows users to view all potential skips and text fills at the machine-logic level. Similarly, the single-year data files available on gss.norc.org will have variables in roughly questionnaire order (although there's some discrepancy given the ballot system interacting with the core). In the future, both of those may be cleaner starting points than the data provided by a publisher, or indeed the data on the GSS Data Explorer.
"We will likely need to have an internal discussion about hosting modified data files via the data explorer or gss.norc.org, but in principle, the idea is a good one. Thank you for it."
The 2016 GSS has three different questionnaires, all in CAPI format, administered to three interlocking sub-samples. The questions are in questionnaire order, but in a different order for each sub-sample. These are a nightmare to navigate and edit, but I hope eventually to construct one or more facsimile pdf "questionnaires" for simultaneous use on-screen with the associated Data Editor. Wish me luck!
Earl Babbie, William E Wagner III and Jeanne Zaino
Adventures in Social Research: Data Analysis Using IBM SPSS Statistics
(10th edition, Sage 2019)
The best ever textbook for SPSS and survey analysis was Norusis 1987 (no longer available). This new book is by far the best buy of all the other SPSS textbooks reviewed on this site.
For full review see: Review_of_Babbie_Wagner_and_Zaino_2019 (pdf, 3pp, 239 kb)
Paperback is a hefty £65 from Sage UK: $43 from Sage US. Slightly cheaper from Amazon Kindle, Google Play, ebooks.com and Kobo.
It comes in A4 format (297 mm x 210 mm) with 478 pages (two prefaces, 22 chapters, two appendices and an Index/glossary) and weighs 495 grams, Not easy to read in an armchair: you’ll probably need a lectern!
There are 3 holes drilled right through the book and perforations along the edge of each page so that pages can be separated and kept in separate folder. This could be fun if students are sharing a copy!
Particularly oriented to survey research, it uses SPSS 24 and data from the 2016 wave of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) General Social Survey (GSS) covering contemporary issues of genuine interest to students in Sociology and related disciplines (abortion, religion, political attitudes, social inequality and gender issues).
It uses the Graphic User Interface (GUI) exclusively: no syntax at all. (“Syntax” doesn’t even appear in the Index). I much prefer syntax to the GUI, but otherwise it fits perfectly into the pedagogical approach followed in the self-teaching course on this site:
Survey Analysis Workshop (SPSS) One minor niggle is that all their tables are displayed with column percentages (with 100% total at the bottom, as beloved by statisticians and accountants). I prefer tables with row percentages which are much easier to compare, especially when using elaboration techniques.
The book has a companion website which I have so far been unable to penetrate, probably because I have not bought the book myself.
Commentary on SPSS files used in Babbie, Wagner and Zaino (pdf, 26 pp, 1.08 kb) is an account, which I hope will be helpful to any teachers, students or researchers wishing to use the book, giving detailed instructions on how to create the necessary files.
As downloaded via the NORC GSS page Get the Data, file GSS2016.SAV (11.3 mb) has 2867 cases and 961 variables (in alphabetical order, except for MAR1 to MAR14 at the beginning). It is not possible to reproduce exactly the two SPSS data sets used in the book, DEMO.SAV (44 variables) and EXER.SAV (46 variables). However, I downloaded the SPSS file GSS2016.SAV from NORC and have created, from scratch, two data sets (7.4 mb each) demo.sav and exer.sav containing the same variables as in the book, but with a different sample of 1500 cases. Each file contains the same 1500 cases. This means that the Ns in tables will differ slightly from those in the book. There is some overlap of variables between the two (a combined total of 69 variables).
I have also prepared DEMOGRAD.SAV and EXERGRAD.SAV, each with the same 500 cases. for use with the Gradpack version of SPSS, which is limited to 50 variables and 500 cases. Since NORC data sets are freely available, I have asked NORC for permission to upload the above files so that they are downloadable from this site. The SPSS setup files used to extract the data will be uploaded to this site or will be listed as full text in a later commentary. All GUI exercises in the book will have associated *.sps files in the commentary.
In my SPSS tutorials I work with files in which variables are in questionnaire order and I advise users to work with a hard copy of the questionnaire to hand (or at least a facsimile pdf on screen alongside SPSS Data Editor). This makes it easier to navigate both.
The GSS Help and Resources page has much useful information, but I could find nothing on the 2016 questionnaire as the Database entries only go as far as 2014.
I sent a copy of the commentary to the GSS Team at NORC and asked for help in tracing the 2016 questionnaire and offering to provide data files and commentaries for use on their site. Despite the Covid-19 lock-down, they replied immediately:
"All of this work is excellent! We publish the single-year questionnaires, not on the GSS Data Explorer, but on the GSS project website, here:
http://gss.norc.org/Get-Documentation/questionnaires.
This will contain a slightly modified extract of the CAPI which was used for data collection, and allows users to view all potential skips and text fills at the machine-logic level. Similarly, the single-year data files available on gss.norc.org will have variables in roughly questionnaire order (although there's some discrepancy given the ballot system interacting with the core). In the future, both of those may be cleaner starting points than the data provided by a publisher, or indeed the data on the GSS Data Explorer.
"We will likely need to have an internal discussion about hosting modified data files via the data explorer or gss.norc.org, but in principle, the idea is a good one. Thank you for it."
The 2016 GSS has three different questionnaires, all in CAPI format, administered to three interlocking sub-samples. The questions are in questionnaire order, but in a different order for each sub-sample. These are a nightmare to navigate and edit, but I hope eventually to construct one or more facsimile pdf "questionnaires" for simultaneous use on-screen with the associated Data Editor. Wish me luck!