A hands-on introduction to the craft of social research for Introductory Sociology courses, Exploring Social Issues: Using SPSS for Windows, Third Edition puts students in the role of active researchers as they test their own ideas about topics such as divorce, abortion, crime, inequality, prejudice, and television violence using SPSS, the pre-eminent software program in the social sciences.

This Third Edition uses updated General Social Survey (GSS) data sets and offers a robust SPSS primer in an appendix. The book is available in two formats: as a stand-alone text, or bundled with SPSS (Student Version).

Key Features

Stresses active and collaborative learning as students engage in a series of investigative explorations of social issues; Shows students how analyzing data from the General Social Survey, a major national research program, can help them better understand compelling social issues; Teaches students how to use SPSS as they analyze GSS data on a random sample of the population; Guides students step-by-step through exercises that have been designed for those with no background in SPSS; Includes research reports that follow a standardized fill-in-the-blank format for analyzing and presenting results, but with space left for students to summarize their results in their own words