Hi Jane
There have been some very helpful answers so far, especially the Critical Appraisal PDF by Amanda Burls and the Principles of EBH is essential, but wouldn't your student find it easier to have all the stats help in one place. As a former stats-phobic who eventually learned to love statistics I think the best cure for stats-phobia is a copy of Andy Field's Discovering Statistics with SPSS [He has one for STATA too]. It is a huge book but very easy and enjoyable to read. He chooses interesting and amusing research studies to use as examples, which makes learning stats fun, [I actually cracked up laughing in some places] which really helped me to keep reading even when it was taxing my brain. There is a companion website and the first link is a PDF of 400
pages of additional material, Odds Ratio is on page 137; it takes a few minutes to open even with a high speed connection but its worth it.
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/field3e/Downloads/addmaterial/AdditionalDSUSMaterial_Complete.pdf
If you don't have broadband and just want to use the companion website instead of the PDF:
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/field3e/additionalwebmaterial.htm
If you still don't understand anything you can email Andy to the address on his own website: http://www.statisticshell.com/
If you are a disabled or visually impaired student and can have this verified by your university or tutor, Sage will provide a PDF version of the book, [or any other book you need of theirs] so contact Sage
Permissions, and say you are a VIP before buying a copy:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1847879071/?tag=googhydr-21&hvadid=4773809569&ref=pd_sl_1icfzm2cmu_b
There are also Lecturer resources on the companion website, for tutors who might find that some students need to see more than one person's perspective on stats to unlock their understanding. Some people just need to be taught some things in a different way to other people. I found this out when I tried to teach my dyslexic daughter to read.
In
preparation for studying psychology 12 years ago, [I was unaware of SPSS
and other software] I found this website helped to give me the basics:
http://faculty.vassar.edu/lowry/VassarStats.html
The real understanding of stats functions only came from going through the calculations myself then check my answers with a decent calculator before I started using programs like Excel and SPSS. I found I could understand better with figures I entered myself that I understood.
Best wishes Jo
Can anyone suggest an easy guide to odds ratios and other basic stats functions?
A clinical friend has asked for some help with a dissertation and understanding source papers, this is not her area of expertise and she has been frightened off by the scholarly texts she has been
directed too - I suspect her supervisors are not in their area of comfort with this either.
I have moved professionally away from supporting EBH and so am not up to date with user friendly articles. Dare I admit that I looked at the wikipedia which seemed comprehensive but impenetrable to the novice.
suggestions very welcome
Jane Hartley
