Research Methodology in Social Sciences

First Meeting

• Fundamentals of statistical analysis
• Fundamentals of statistical software packages, namely SPSS

• Lectures and seminars
  • During seminars, I'm gonna bringing printed assignments to do in SPSS, therefore bring your laptops with you
• In total, you'll have 6 or 7 practical assignments to do. It's good for practice + helps me to calculate marks. You will have one week to finalize each assignment and upload to Dropbox
• You'll have one take home midterm and one take home final

• Agresti and Finlay's Statistical Methods in Social Sciences
• Field's Discovering Statistics Using SPSS
• I will distribute textbooks via email

• http://davidsichinava.github.io/qrm
• Class materials, presentations, assignments, attendance, and any other information will be available through this website

• Observations and data
• Models

• Design
• Description
• Inference

• Descriptive versus inferential statistics

• Population versus samples

• Parameters and statistics

• Reliability, validity, and uncertainty

• Language of variables
• Quantitative and categorical variables
• Nominal, ordinal, and interval scales
• Discrete and continuous variables

• Let's make sure everyone has SPSS on their machines
• If you are using Mac, I can provide you with installer, just let me know