Introduction to the Student Study Site
The Student Study Site has been created for students and instructors using Fundamentals of Social Work Research, by Rafael Engel and Russell Schutt. This study site should be a valuable resource that both students and instructors can use in tandem with their textbook to enhance understanding of key concepts and facilitate class discussions.
General Resources
Interactive Exercises
These exercises are designed to help students master the key concepts and terminology introduced throughout the text. The exercises review various topics. Questions are based on real research examples, so when practicing with the exercises students will learn more about the social world as well as improving their understanding of methodological concepts.
Reviewing Inferential Statistics
This review has been taken from Social Statistics for a Diverse Society, Third Edition by Chava Frankfort-Nachmias and Anna Leon-Guerrero, and provides statistical exercises for students to practice with.
Answers to Questions from Reviewing Inferential Statistics
Answer to the questions in the Reviewing Inferential Statistics section have been provided here.
Web Resources
The Internet is a powerful learning tool and can be used as a supplement to course material. The recommended web sites include a brief annotation describing the resources available.
SPSS Exercises
These exercises will help students practice analyzing data in SPSS.
Datasets and Documentation
The General Social Survey data set provides students an opportunity to analyze data about important social research questions. Students can use the data set to carry out the SPSS exercises on the study site to learn more about related issues.
This subset of the General Social Survey, the GSS2006x file, is designed just for the SPSS exercises and the SPSS appendix on the site. The GSS2006x dataset can be run with the SPSS Student program (of course, it also will work with the complete version of the SPSS program). Please be aware that there are some recoded variables in the GSS2006x file that does not appear in the original GSS2006 file. In order to carry out all the exercises in ISW, you must use the GSS2006x subset file available on this website.
Another dataset is provided here for use during labs, as part of homework assignments, etc., as well as for further exploration on one's own. It is not discussed in the text. The Shelter1990 dataset is from a survey of homeless persons in multiple shelters in Boston that Russell K. Schutt conducted in 1990. All information that could identify any individual person has been omitted. You can review the survey instrument by opening the corresponding document on this website. You will find the codebook and variable list on this document.
How to Use a Statistical Package
A step-by-step tutorial about SPSS basics.
Statistics Tutorials
The statistics tutorials provide a step-by-step, hands-on guide to using SPSS to generate basic statistics. Students can perform all analyses in the tutorials with the special file from the 2006 General Social Survey, GSS2006TUTORIAL. This file contains a selected sample of 1,500 cases from the GSS so that it can be used with the Student Version of SPSS, as well as with the standard version.
Searching the Web
Russell K. Schutt and Elizabeth Schneider have provided an easy to understand PowerPoint presentation on searching the web, which will help students with their research.
Chapter Resources
Quizzes
The web quiz for students provides multiple choice and true/false questions to enhance students' understanding of the material. Answers are provided for each of the questions.
Flashcards
The E-Flashcards are a tool for students to enhance their understanding of key terms outlined in the chapters. E-Flashcards may also be used as a study tool for exams and quizzes.
Web Exercises
The web exercises are taken from the textbook, providing students with the URLs to link to the resources discussed in the each question at the end of each chapter.
Journal Articles
Students will find interesting, relevant research articles here, including some for evidence-based research. A brief summary of each article has been provided as well as the full-text articles themselves (in PDF). If you do not have a PDF reader, please visit http://get.adobe.com/reader/
Acknowledgments and Thanks
A number of people need to be acknowledged and thanked for their hard work in developing the material on this Study Site.
Thanks to Ray Engel and Russ Schutt, whose dedication and perseverance has made the book and ancillary materials into detailed, thorough, and learning-friendly products. Also, thanks to Gayle Mallinger, of the University of Pittsburgh, who revised the web quizzes and chose journal articles.