Bayesian Methods: A Social and Behavioral Sciences Approach(Chapman & Hall/CRC Statistics in the Social and Behavioral Sciences)

Despite increasing interest in Bayesian approaches, especially across the social sciences, it has been virtually impossible to find a text that introduces Bayesian data analysis in a manner accessible to social science students. The Bayesian paradigm is ideally suited to the type of data analysis they will have to perform, but the associated mathem

Table of Contents:
Background and Introduction. Likelihood Inference and the Generalized Linear Model. The Bayesian Setup. The Normal and Student's-T Models. The Bayesian Prior. Assessing Model Quality. Bayesian Hypothesis Testing and the Bayes Factor. Bayesian Posterior Simulation. Basics of Markov Chain Monte Carlo. Bayesian Hierarchical Models. Practical Markov Chain Monte Carlo.

Review :
"This book is a brilliant and importantly very accessible introduction to the concept and application of Bayesian approaches to data analysis. The clear strength of the book is in making the concept practical and accessible, without necessarily dumbing it down. … The coverage is also remarkable." - Dr. S. V. Subramanian, Harvard School of Public Health "One of the signal contributions of Bayesian methods: A Social and Behavioral Sciences Approach is to reintroduce Bayesian inference and computing to a general social sciences audience. This is an important contribution--one that will make demand for this book high…Jeff Gill has gone some way toward reinventing the graduate-level methodology textbook… …Gill's treatment of the practicalities of convergence is a real service…new users of the technique will appreciate this material. …the inclusion of material on hierarchical modeling at first seems unconventional; its use in political science, while increasing, has been limited. However, Bayesian inference and MCMC methods are well-suited to these types of problems, and it is exactly these types of treatments that push the discipline in new directions. As noted, a number of monographs have appeared recently to reintroduce Bayesian inference to a new generation of computer-savvy statisticians. …However, Gill achieves what these do not: a quality introduction and reference guide to Bayesian inference and MCMC methods that will become a standard in political methodology." -The Journal of Politics, November 2003