Understanding statistical concepts is essential for social work professionals. It is key to understanding research and reaching evidence-based decisions in your own practice—but that is only the beginning. If you understand statistics, you can determine the best interventions for your clients. You can use new tools to monitor and evaluate the progress of your client or team. You can recognize biased systems masked by complex models and the appearance of scientific neutrality. For social workers, statistics are not just math, they are a critical practice tool.
This concise and approachable introduction to statistics limits its coverage to the concepts most relevant to social workers. Statistics in Social Work guides students through concepts and procedures from descriptive statistics and correlation to hypothesis testing and inferential statistics. Besides presenting key concepts, it focuses on real-world examples that students will encounter in a social work practice. Using concrete illustrations from a variety of potential concentrations and populations, Amy Batchelor creates clear connections between theory and practice—and demonstrates the important contributions statistics can make to evidence-based and rigorous social work practice.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. Creating Useful Data
3. Understanding People and Populations
4. Variance: The Distance Between Us
5. The Statistics of Relationships
6. Sampling: The Who and the How
7. What Works? Hypothesis Testing and Inferential Statistics
8. When Two Is Not Enough: Testing with Multiple Groups
9. An Introduction to Advanced Concepts
Appendix I: Glossary
Appendix II: Answer Key for Review Questions
Appendix III: Equations Cheat Sheet
References
About the author
Amy Batchelor, MSW, is a lecturer at Columbia University School of Social Work. Before this, she was a presidential management fellow in the Office of Management and Budget for the President. This would be her first book.
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