Black Belt Statistics: A Competency-Based Approach (Plus SPSS and R) clearly communicates statistical competencies to students, allows for practice and evaluation, and arranges competencies in a hierarchy. The workbook employs a martial arts-inspired belt system, awarding students new achievement ranks after they’ve demonstrated mastery of key concepts and allowing them to proceed to the next level of competencies.

The workbook features 11 chapters, each of which represent a belt and proceed in ascending order from white belt to black belt. Opening chapters address basic terminology, resolving formulas, rounding figures, research designs and variables, scales of measurement, and frequency tables and graphs. In later chapters, students learn about central tendency, bivariate correlation and scatterplots, basic probability, hypothesis testing, and z and t tests. More advanced chapters cover confidence intervals, ANOVA, simple regression, Chi-Square, choosing the appropriate test, and SPSS and R programming.

Designed to help students at all levels develop statistical skills and a sound knowledge base, Black Belt Statistics is an ideal supplementary workbook for courses in social science statistics and statistical methods at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Thomas Sawyer, Ph.D. has over two decades of experience teaching psychology statistics and research methods at the undergraduate and graduate level. His research examining or utilizing research methods has been shared via conference presentations and peer-reviewed publications.

Lisa Hollis-Sawyer, Ph.D. is an associate professor of psychology and coordinator of the gerontology program at Northeastern Illinois University. She has taught research methodology and statistics courses at the undergraduate and graduate level since 1990.

Patrick Nebl, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of psychology at Elmhurst College. He received his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in experimental neuroscience from Bowling Green State University, where he conducted research in psychometrics and evolutional psychology.