Handbook Of Spatial Analysis In The Social Sciences

Providing an authoritative assessment of the current landscape of spatial analysis in the social sciences, this cutting-edge Handbook covers the full range of standard and emerging methods across the social science domain areas in which these methods are typically applied. Accessible and comprehensive, it expertly answers the key questions regarding the dynamic intersection of spatial analysis and the social sciences.

Many theories in the social sciences predict spatial dependence or the similarity of behaviors at neighboring locations. Spatial Analysis for the Social Sciences demonstrates how researchers can diagnose and model this spatial dependence and draw more valid inferences as a result. The book is structured around the well-known Galton's problem and presents a step-by-step guide to the application of spatial analysis. The book examines a variety of spatial diagnostics and models through a series of applied examples drawn from the social sciences. These include spatial lag models that capture behavioral diffusion between actors, spatial error models that account for spatial dependence in errors, and models that incorporate spatial heterogeneity in the effects of covariates. Spatial Analysis for the Social Sciences also examines advanced spatial models for time-series cross-sectional data, categorical and limited dependent variables, count data, and survival data.

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.

The widespread use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has significantly increased the demand for knowledge about spatial analytical techniques across a range of disciplines. As growing numbers of researchers realise they are dealing with spatial data, the demand for specialised statistical and mathematical methods designed to deal with spatial data is undergoing a rapid increase. Responding to this demand, The Handbook of Spatial Analysis is a comprehensive and authoritative discussion of issues and techniques in the field of Spatial Data Analysis. Its principal focus is on: • why the analysis of spatial data needs separate treatment • the main areas of spatial analysis • the key debates within spatial analysis • examples of the application of various spatial analytical techniques • problems in spatial analysis • areas for future research Aimed at an international audience of academics, The Handbook of Spatial Analysis will also prove essential to graduate level students and researchers in government agencies and the private sector.

Spatial analysis assists theoretical understanding and empirical testing in the social sciences, and rapidly expanding applications of geographic information technologies have advanced the spatial data-gathering needed for spatial analysis and model making. This much-needed volume covers outstanding examples of spatial thinking in the social sciences, with each chapter showing some aspect of how certain social processes can be understood by analyzing their spatial context. The audience for this work is as trans-disciplinary as its authorship because it contains approaches and methodologies useful to geography, anthropology, history, political science, economics, criminology, sociology, and statistics.

The chapters in this book provide coverage of the theoretical underpinnings and methodologies that typify research using a Spatially Integrated Social Science (SISS) approach. This insightful Handbook is intended chiefly as a primer for students and bu

GIS and the Social Sciences offers a uniquely social science approach on the theory and application of GIS with a range of modern examples. It explores how human geography can engage with a variety of important policy issues through linking together GIS and spatial analysis, and demonstrates the importance of applied GIS and spatial analysis for solving real-world problems in both the public and private sector. The book introduces basic theoretical material from a social science perspective and discusses how data are handled in GIS, what the standard commands within GIS packages are, and what they can offer in terms of spatial analysis. It covers the range of applications for which GIS has been primarily used in the social sciences, offering a global perspective of examples at a range of spatial scales. The book explores the use of GIS in crime, health, education, retail location, urban planning, transport, geodemographics, emergency planning and poverty/income inequalities. It is supplemented with practical activities and datasets that are linked to the content of each chapter and provided on an eResource page. The examples are written using ArcMap to show how the user can access data and put the theory in the textbook to applied use using proprietary GIS software. This book serves as a useful guide to a social science approach to GIS techniques and applications. It provides a range of modern applications of GIS with associated practicals to work through, and demonstrates how researcher and policy makers alike can use GIS to plan services more effectively. It will prove to be of great interest to geographers, as well as the broader social sciences, such as sociology, crime science, health, business and marketing.

GIS and Spatial Analysis for the Social Sciences, Second Edition is a foundational text that provides 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 provides a wealth of examples as to why these techniques are worth doing, over and above conventional statistical techniques using STATA, R, SPSS or other statistical packages. This new edition will offer a wealth of screenshots from the open source software, QGIS, to give students step-by-step instruction along with an extensive companion website with new data sets and instructor support material.