Preface
This book introduces quantitative research in the scientific and health disciplines, with an emphasis on introductory statistics. Unlike many introductory statistics textbooks, this textbook gives context to the statistics by first covering the basics of the research design process; it connects the research question with the means to answer that question. I believe this is crucial to understanding the need and purpose of using statistics.
The book is designed for teaching at first-year undergraduate level, with examples mostly drawn from science, health and engineering. Many real journal articles are used throughout the text as examples that demonstrate the use of the techniques. Almost every dataset used in this book is a real dataset and available in the R package SRMData; also see App. A.
The main focus of the books is the analysis of data, with an emphasis on understanding the underlying concepts rather than a focus on using mathematics. Software output is often used to help when calculations become onerous. The output is from jamovi (The jamovi Project 2022), but is sufficiently generic that no knowledge of jamovi is necessary to use this book, and this book can be read without relying on any specific statistical software. (jamovi, however, is free to download and use.)
The following call-outs are used in this book:
These chunks introduce the objectives for the chapters of the book.
These chunks highlight common mistakes or warnings, about a particular concept or about using a formula.
These chunks offer helpful information.
These chunks refer to information about using software (jamovi) or a calculator.
These chunks indicate how certain symbols and terms are pronounced.
This book was made using R (R Core Team 2018) with the bookdown package (Xie 2016), using Markdown syntax and knitr (Xie 2015) and numerous other R packages. All of this software is free and open source. Other resources used include:
- Some online activities are created using LearningApps.org, which is free to use.
- various icons from iconmonstr (freely available).
- the images of the cards are in the public domain (e.g., in Sect. 19.2), from https://code.google.com/archive/p/vector-playing-cards/.
Earlier drafts of this textbook have been used to teach thousands of students, and the book has been used by many fantastic teaching assistants. I thank all of them for their feedback. Special thanks to Dr Amanda Shaker (La Trobe University), who reported numerous issues in earlier editions (and often provided corrections).
How to use this online book
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Navigation: Navigate between pages depends on the size of your screen. On wider screens:
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- The right-side menu is for navigating between the sections of the current chapter.
Words can be searched for using Search button on the menu:
The book is optimised for online viewing, and the book may be updated frequently, so a printed PDF version may not be the most recent version.
In some places, interactive 'quiz' questions are given. In the online version, the background turns from red to green when the answer is correct. Try it now:
- What is \(1 + 1\)?
- What is \(1 + 2\)?
- Is \(2 + 2 = 4\)?
- Which one of these is FALSE?
Image credits
The sources of the images used in the online version of this book (in accordance with the terms of Unsplash, Pixabay and Pexels) are listed below.
Image of the mouse (e.g., Sect. 1.1): Photo by Shutterbug75 from Pixabay
Image of the cigarette (e.g., Sect. 1.3): Photo by Shutterbug75 from Pixabay
Image of students around a computer (e.g., Sect 1.6): Photo by Sain Tipchai from Pixabay
Image of gardening (e.g., Sect. 1.3): Photo by Lukas from Pexels
Image of electric car charging (e.g., Sect. 1.4): Photo by Rathaphon Nanthapreecha from Pexels
Image of stressed students (e.g., Sect. 2.10): Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile from Pexels
Image of women playing rugby (Sect. 2.10): Photo by TheOtherKev from Pixabay
Image of women at the beach (e.g., Sect 2.9): Photo by nappy from Pexels
Image of tyres (e.g., Sect 2.9): Photo by Mylene2401 from Pixabay
Image of the man (e.g., Sect 2.9): Photo by Moose Photos from Pexels
Image of person walking (e.g., Sect. 4.2): Photo by Kaboompics.com from Pexels
Image of soft drinks (e.g., Sect. 4.6): Photo by ThreeMilesPerHour from Pixabay
Image of paper pile (e.g., Sect. 5.1): Photo by Ag Ku from Pixaby
Image of hazard sign (e.g., Sect. 5.2): Photo by Mikael Seegen from Unsplash
Image of older man with a headache (e.g., Sect. 6.2): Photo by Gerd Altmann from Pexels
Image of soup (e.g., Sect. 19.2): Photo by Audrey Hunt from Pixabay
The images of dice (e.g., Sect. 18.4.1): Images by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
Image of baby (e.g., Sect. 18.4.2): Photo by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
Image of cyclone (e.g., Sect. 18.4.3): Photo by WikiImages from Pixabay
Image of school kids (e.g., Sect. 6.3): Photo by Iqwan Alif from Pexels
Image of person typing (e.g., Sect. 6.5.1): Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels
Image of the prosthetic (e.g., Sect. 6.6): Photo by ThisIsEngineering from Pexels
Image of two people drinking coffee (e.g., Sect. 6.6): Photo by Lina Kivaka from Pexels
Image of sweaty woman (e.g., Sect. 6.6): Photo by Juergen Striewski from Pexels
Image of an electric car charging (e.g., Sect. 6.6): Photo by Rathaphon Nanthapreecha from Pexels
Image of a wholegrain loaf (e.g., Sect. 7.1): Photo by Gil Goldman from Pexels
Image of two women (e.g., Sect. 7.2): Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
Image of toothbrush (e.g., Sect. 7.3): Photo by PhotoMIX Company from Pexels
Image of a man washing his hands (e.g., Sect. 8.2): Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels
Image of a man drinking coffee (e.g., Sect. 8.4): Photo by nappy from Pexels
Image of mail box (e.g., Sect. 10.3): Photo by Carlos Cuadros from Pexels
Image of mail box (e.g., Sect. 10.3): Photo by Tristan Le from Pexels
Image of father and baby (e.g., Sect. 11.3.2): Photo by nappy from Pexels
Image of fries (e.g., Sect. 11.3.3): Photo by Dzenina Lukac from Pexels
Image of athletes (e.g., Sect. 16.2): Photo by Jim De Ramos from Pexels
Image of birthday cake (e.g., Sect. 14.3.1): Photo by Leslie Eckert from Pixabay
Image of a river (e.g., Sect. 11.6): Photo by Beverly Buckley from Pixabay
Image of Jersey cow (e.g., Sect. 11.6.1): Photo by Ari Kejonen from Pixabay
Image of a child brushing teeth (e.g., Sect. 19.3): Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels
Image of playing cards (e.g., Sect. 18.5): Photo by Patrick JL Laso from Pixabay
Image of tape measure (e.g., Sect. 21.4): Photo by Johanna Pakkala from Pixabay
Image of forest (e.g., Sect. 21.7): Photo by Brandon Montrone from Pexels
Image of roulette wheel (e.g., Sect. 20.3): Photo by Greg Montani from Pixabay
Image of dice (e.g., Sect. 23.1): Photo by Skitterphoto from Pexels
Image of a koala (e.g., Sect. 23.4): Photo by Eriksson Luo on Unsplash
Image of the energy drink (e.g., Sect. 23.4): Photo by Adriano Gadini from Pixabay
Image of blood test equipment (e.g., Sect. 23.6): Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels
Image of woman drinking coffee (e.g., Sect. 23.7): Photo by Gian Cescon on Unsplash
Image of a child carrying a school bag (e.g., Sect. 24.3): Photo by Pixabay
Image of a scan (e.g., Sect. 24.4): Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels
Image of peanuts (e.g., Sect. 24.5): Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash
Image of couple using a a phone in the car (e.g., Sect. 27.1): Photo by Splitshire from Pexels
Image of a citrus tree (e.g., Sect. 27.4): Photo by Anderson Guerra from Pexels
Image of litter on beach (e.g., Sect. 27.4): Photo by Lucien Wanda from Pexels
Image of freeway exit (e.g., Sect. 34.5): Photos by Pexels from Pexels
Image of a handful of blueberries (Sect. 29.2): Photo by Jan Temmel from Pixabay
Image of loaded dice (Sect. 30.1): Photo by Peter K. Dunn.
Image of woman in wheelchair (e.g., Sect. 27.10): Photo by: Marcus Aurelius from Pexels
Image of students (e.g., Sect. 28.1; Sect. 35.1 ): Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels
Image of woman with thermometer (e.g., Sect. 31.1): Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels
Image of deer (e.g., Sect. 37.1; Sect. 38.3): Photo by Diana Parkhouse on Unsplash
Image of polluted water (e.g., Sect. 37.4): Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels
Image of reading notes (e.g., Sect. 40.1): Photo by Pixaby from Pexels
Image of woman writing (e.g., Sect. 39.1): Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels
Image of writing on a desk (e.g., Sect. 39.5.3): Photo by Free-Photos from Pixabay.
Learning Outcomes
In this book, you will learn to:
- Develop quantitative research questions and testable hypotheses.
- Design quantitative studies to answer simple quantitative research questions.
- Select and produce appropriate graphical, numerical and statistical analyses.
- Select, apply and interpret the results of the correct statistical technique to analyse data.
- Comprehend, apply and communicate in the language of research and statistics.
- Demonstrate professional integrity in planning, interpreting and reporting the results of quantitative studies.
How to cite this book
Peter K. Dunn (2024). Scientific Research and Methodology: An introduction to quantitative research in science and health. https://bookdown.org/pkaldunn/SRM-Textbook
The online version of this book is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You can purchase a printed copy or PDF copy from CRC Press in 2025.