The purpose of this course is to provide you with a rudimentary understanding of basic research design and data analysis to help you read and understand research literature. No previous experience in statistics or data analysis is expected. The course is designed with a focus on you as a consumer of the research literature, not as the person doing the research (although you will get some suggestions about that as we go along). To that end, the course is conceptual and thus does not focus on statistical formulas or computation. The course will involve reading, writing and practice on basic research and statistical concepts and models.
Students will leave the course with:
- A solid understanding of some basic concepts of research design.
- A solid understanding of basic concepts of data analysis (basic descriptive statistics and inferential statistics) and interpretation.
- A demonstrated awareness of basic strengths and weaknesses of research studies.
- Ability to read and understand the methods and analysis sections of reports/articles using basic statistics in addition to the introduction and discussion sections.
Huck, Schuyler W. (2004, 4th Edition). Reading Statistics and Research. Pearson.
Course Content:
- Course Overview and Reading a Research Article
- Basic Research Design
- Descriptive Statistics
- Correlation
- Quality of Measurement: Reliability and Validity
- Basics of Inferential Statistics (Estimation) and Significance Testing
- One and Two Sample Statistical Tests
- One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)
- Significance Testing of Correlation Coefficients
- Simple and Multiple Linear Regression
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