“…Although our emphasis is on formulating and testing hypotheses in the social sciences, the implicit message about thinking critically and carefully crafting questions is, in principle, far broader and relevant for other disciplines as well. The tutorials also provide a way to demonstrate how Excel can be used to perform calculations that form the basis of statistical testing such as computing and comparing mean values, and this use of Excel may have payo-ffs beyond allowing students to do economic analysis (Cahill & Kosicki, 2001, noted the marketability of spreadsheet skills). Furthermore, because the tutorials provide detailed discussions of the way that different economic phenomena are measured and of generated, categorical, and numerical variables, they can be used to launch discussions about measurement issues and survey methodology.…”