Understand political evidence. Put research methods into practice.
The Essentials of Political Analysis develops concepts and interpretation. Choose a companion for SPSS, Stata, Excel, or R to practice those methods with guided examples and real political data.
Seventh edition
How do you turn a political question into a claim supported by evidence? The Essentials of Political Analysis introduces the concepts and reasoning behind sound research, from defining and measuring variables to designing comparisons, describing patterns, and evaluating competing explanations.
Build an understanding of research design and ethics, descriptive statistics, statistical inference, and regression. Learn to interpret results and assess what political data can tell you, including the limits of an analysis. Pair the text with a software companion to connect these ideas with hands-on practice, or use it alongside another approach to learning research methods. The book page brings together chapter information and resources for students and instructors.
Book details and resources
Seventh edition
Learn through SPSS menus, guided examples, and annotated screenshots, then save syntax files to reproduce your analysis. Fifteen chapters move from descriptive statistics to logistic regression, with focused coverage of visualization, research ethics, and regression diagnostics. Updated political datasets, chapter reviews, exercises, and tutorial videos support practice and interpretation.
Book details and resources
Fifth edition
Build a repeatable workflow with Stata commands, guided screenshots, and reusable Do-files. Work through fifteen teaching modules using political datasets, from describing variables and making comparisons to inference and regression. Exercises and tutorial videos help you practice, while dedicated coverage of research ethics and regression diagnostics strengthens how you evaluate results.
Book details and resources
First edition
Develop political analysis skills in a familiar spreadsheet using formulas, pivot tables, charts, and statistical tools. Guided screenshots and practical exercises take you from descriptive statistics to hypothesis testing and regression. Six companion workbooks provide four political datasets plus two statistical teaching workbooks, with tutorial videos to support independent practice.
Book details and resources
Fourth edition
Learn political analysis with guided R examples and scripts you can adapt for your own research. Work with updated datasets, including ANES 2024 and GSS 2024, while building skills in visualization, inference, and regression. Chapter outlines, defined-term lists, and supporting materials help you navigate the book and develop reproducible analyses.
Book details and resources