Comparisons and Associations

Drawing comparisons and identifying associations between variables underpins most quantitative sociological analyses. While in Workshop 1 we practiced describing variables individually, we now focus on describing variables in relation to one another. We make further steps in understanding the concept of “social trust” by exploring various factors that appear associated with it. Identifying associations and patterns in a dataset, and setting up new research hypothesis based on them is often the most that we can realistically do with our data.

Most often than not, however, our true aim is to set up a statistical model that can be used for making predictions or testing causal relationships about our phenomenon of interest. We will explore these aims and their limits over the next two workshops in exploring how we can make more directed comparisons and identify cleaner associations using regression techniques.

Essential readings

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1. Spiegelhalter (2020) The Art of Statistics:
   • CHAPTER 2 | Summarizing and Communicating Numbers. Lots of Numbers
     • continue reading from the section on Describing Relationships Between Variables
   • CHAPTER 4 | What Causes What?
   • CHAPTER 3 | Why Are We Looking at Data Anyway? Populations and Measurement
     • recommended now, essential by Workshop 5
2. Goss-Sampson (2025) Statistical Analysis in JASP:
   • DESCRIPTIVE DATA VISUALISATION (pp. 21-30)
   • EXPLORING DATA INTEGRITY (pp. 30-37)
   • DATA TRANSFORMATION (pp. 38-41)
   • COMPARING TWO INDEPENDENT GROUPS (pp. 56-63)
   • COMPARING TWO RELATED GROUPS (pp. 63-69)
   • CORRELATION ANALYSIS (pp. 69-75)
   • CHI-SQUARE TEST FOR ASSOCIATION (pp. 145-152)

Application:

• Wilkinson & Pickett (2010) The Spirit Level, Chapter 4
• Delhey & Newton (2005) Predicting Cross-National Levels of Social Trust

Further readings

Statistics:

• Kranzler (2022) Statistics for the Terrified:
  • Chapter 9 (“The t Test”)
  • Chapter 10 (“Analysis of Variance”)
  • Chapter 11 (“Correlation Coefficients”)
• Çetinkaya-Rundel & Hardin (2024) Introduction to Modern Statistics:
  • Chapter 4 (“Exploring categorical data”)
  • Chapter 5 (“Exploring numerical data”)

On trust:

• Dinesen, Peter Thisted, and René Bekkers (2017) “The Foundations of Individuals’ Generalized Social Trust: A Review.” Pp. 77–100 in Trust in Social Dilemmas, edited by P. A. M. van Lange, B. Rockenbach, and T. Yamagishi. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.