Statistics: A Component of the Research Process

This book provides a general discussion beneficial to librarians and library school students, and demonstrates the steps of the research process, decisions made in the selection of a statistical technique, how to program a computer to perform number crunching, how to compute those statistical techniques appearing most frequently in the literature of library and information science, and examples from the literature of the uses of different statistical techniques. The book accomplishes the following objectives: to provide an overview of the research process and to show where statistics fit in; to identify journals in library and information science most likely to publish research articles; to identify reference tools that provide access to the research literature; to show how microcomputers can be programmed to engage in number crunching; to introduce basic statistical concepts and terminology; to present basic statistical procedures that appear most frequently in the literature of library and information science and that have application to library decision making; to discuss library decision support systems and show the types of statistical techniques they can perform; and to summarize the major decisions that researchers must address in deciding which statistical techniques to employ.