Acknowledgement

A book such as this is always a collaboration that extends beyond the authors. We owe a depth of gratitude to many and we would like to begin by thanking our family members, Janis, Cassiopeia, Leila, and Thea Stehlik-Barry, Tony's wife Terri M. Long, and their children Gina and Anthony. Authoring a book inevitably takes time away from family and the patience of our spouses and children is much appreciated. We would also like to thank our late parents, Leo and Patricia Barry and Anthony and Dorothy Babinec. They fostered our love of learning and supported our scholastic pursuits during our youth.

We would also like to acknowledge the late Norman Nie, a founder of SPSS and highly regarded social scientist. Norman was an empirical researcher and SPSS was his tool as well as his creation. His use of SPSS for his own analysis led to many valuable additions to the software. Ken coauthored Education and Democratic Citizenship with Norman and Jane Junn. Tony was a teaching assistant and research assistant with Norman at the University of Chicago. Norman was a colleague, mentor, and a valued friend and is greatly missed.

The team at Packt was enormously helpful in bringing this book to fruition. Tejas Limkar, our most frequent contact person, brought enthusiasm and encouragement to the project and kept things on track. Tushar Gupta was instrumental in launching the book initially, and Dharmendra Yadav drove the final push to get it completed. We also thank those at Packt that worked behind the scenes to deal with the graphics, editing, proofing and productions tasks.                                        

Finally, we would like thank Colin Shearer, our IBM/SPSS colleague who put us in touch with Tushar at Packt initially and our two reviewers, James Mott and James Sugrue. They are long term colleagues of the authors and have a very deep knowledge of SPSS Statistics. Their feedback helped to make this a better book. We also thank our many colleagues at SPSS Inc., who collectively over the years built SPSS Statistics into the great product it has become.

Kenneth Stehlik-Barry

Anthony J. Babinec