Roger Penn is currently Professor of Sociology in the School of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work at Queen’s University Belfast. Previously, he was Professor of Economic Sociology at Lancaster University. He has been a visiting professor at UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the University of Bologna and has authored 14 books including Skilled Workers in the Class Structure; Class, Power and Technology; Social Change and Economic Life in Britain; and Children of International Migrants in Europe. He has edited a range of books including Skill and Occupational Change, Trade Unions in Recession, and two 4 Volume SAGE Series: Social Statistics and The Statistical Analysis of Continuous Data. He has also authored around 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals since 1975. He is currently on the editorial board of the European Journal for Sport and Society. He has a long-standing interest in the sociology of football. He has taught courses in this field for over a decade both at Lancaster University and more recently at Queen’s University. He has published a range of articles over recent years that have examined football sociologically. These have included several SAGE Research Methods Case Studies.
Statistics and statistical analyses have become a key feature of contemporary social science. Social statistics is the use of statistical measurement systems to study human behavior in a social environment. This can be accomplished through polling a particular group of people, evaluating a particular subset of data obtained about a group of people, or by observation and statistical analysis of a set of data that relates to people and their behaviors. This major reference collection brings together the classic pieces that have framed the often controversial debates of using statistics as a social research method.
