Gis And Spatial Analysis For The Social Sciences: Coding, Mapp

Description:
This is the first book to provide sociologists, criminologists, political scientists, and other social scientists with the methodological logic and techniques for doing spatial analysis in their chosen fields of inquiry. The book contains a wealth of examples as to why these techniques are worth doing, over and above conventional statistical techniques using SPSS or other statistical packages. GIS is a methodological and conceptual approach that allows for the linking together of spatial data, or data that is based on a physical space, with non-spatial data, which can be thought of as any data that contains no direct reference to physical locations.

Review:
'This is a first-rate book on GIS and spatial analysis. The authors adopt a 'learn-by-doing' approach and make it work by combining lucid explanations of concepts and procedures with rich examples. The book will be a valuable resource to students, teachers, and researchers interested in understanding the spatial dimension of social life.' --Steven F. Messner, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology, University at Albany, SUNY 'This book is an excellent introduction to the latest tools and techniques for using spatial analyses to study behavior. It is written in a clear and step-by-step fashion with ample illustrations and enables the reader to quickly engage the complex tools of GIS including details concerning appropriate statistical analyses which go well beyond plotting data on maps.' --Harold D. Holder, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, Prevention Research

Table of Contents:
Title Page; Table of Contents; Preface; Overview; Section I Introduction to Geocoding and Mapping; How to Make a Pin Map; Why Geocode? The Basics of Geocoding; Ex: The Process of Geocoding; Ex: The Science and Art of; Interactive Geocoding; Ex: Exporting a Geocoded Map; Thematic Maps; Ex: Creating a Thematic Map from Sample Data; Ex: Racial Profiling Thematic Map; Ex: Juvenile Crime Thematic Map; Summary of Section I; Section II Mapping for Analysis, Policy, and Decision Making; Basic Multivariate Displays; Mapping Rates; Ex: Classification or World Armed Rivalries; Ex: Subsets of Youth Violence; Ex: Maps for School Planning; Ex: Tessellations and Youth Violence; Ex: Rates of Poverty Over Time in New Orleans; Ex: Patterns of Residency by Ethnicity; Ex: Diffusion of Innovation in the United States; (3D map); Ex: Socioeconomic Conditions in 3D; Ex: Homicide Patterns; Ex: Alcohol Availability and Youth Violence; Ex: Hurricane Katrina's Impact on Children and Schools; Ex: HIV and Armed National Rivalries; Ex: Immigration and Unemployment in the U.S. Ex: California Education System; Summary of Section II; Section III Geospatial Modeling and G.I.S. Why spatial modeling in this book? Why spatial modeling at all? The Meaning of Space in Causal Modeling; Measuring the Impact of Space and; Spatial Relationships; Statistical Issues in Spatial Modeling; The Impact of Spatial Autocorrelations and; Error Structures in Spatial Modeling; Statistical Modeling of Spatial Data; Types of Data Used in Spatial Models; Choosing Software to Estimate Spatial Models; Ex: A Cross Sectional Spatial Model: Gang Crime; And Alcohol Availability; Ex: Multi-Site Studies in Spatial Modeling; Ex: Pooled Cross Sectional and Time Series; Spatial Models; Ex: Spatial Models: Limitations, Issues, And Emerging Developments; Conclusion; References; Appendix 1: GIS Data Sources

Author Biography:
Robert Nash Parker (Ph.D., Duke University) is Co-Director of the Presley Center for Crime and Justice Studies at University of California, Riverside. He has long been interested in the useful application of methods originally pioneered outside of the social sciences (i.e. Structural Equation Modeling (psychology), HLM (education), logistic regression (Economics), ridge regression (chemistry) to the social sciences. Emily Asencio (Ph.D., University of California, Riverside) is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Academic Center for Excellence on Youth Violence Prevention at the University of California, Riverside.