Syllabus
Part I: Research Methods
Week 1: Introduction and Background to Research
- No reading.
Week 2: Background to Research
- Bernard, Ch. 2 (in reader)
- Creswell, Ch. 1 (in reader)
Week 3: Defining Research Problems
- Brown and Muchira. 2004. "Investigating the relationship between internet privacy concerns and online purchase behavior." Journal of Electronic Commerce Research. [*Focus on first 6 pages*]. PDF
- Mark, Noah. 1998. "Birds of a Feather Sing Together" Social Forces 77:2. [*Focus on first 16 pages, up until the Results*] PDF
NOTE: The main goal for these readings is to critically examine the research problems and questions in each paper, and how the method fits the stated questions/problem. More details
Week 4: Survey Data Collection and Questionnaires
(Be sure to click through all the subsections that appear when you click through the sections of Survey Research on the left-hand navigation.)
- Bernard, Ch. 8 (in reader)
Week 5: Surveys, continued
- Jon Krosnick, "Question and Questinnaire Design" PDF
- Saris, W., Revilla, M., Krosnick, J. A., & Shaeffer, E. (2010). Comparing questions with agree/disagree response options to questions with item-specific response options. Survey Research Methods, 4, 61-79. PDF
Week 6: Experiments and Experimental Design
- Bernard, Ch. 4 (in reader)
- Freedman, Pisani, and Purves, Ch. 1
L11. Thursday, Sept. 30 Data (454.9 KB)
- RMKB: Design
- Freedman, Pisani, and Purves, Ch. 2
Part II: Probability and Statistics
Week 7: Probability and Sampling
- Freedman et al. Chapters 13 (pp. 221-233), 14 (pp. 237-246) and 19 (pp. 333-353)
- Freedman et al. Chapter 20
- Bernard Chapter 5, "Sampling" (in reader)
Week 8: Introduction to STATA and Working with Structured Data
- RMKB: Data Preparation; ICPSR Guide to Social Science Data Preparation: Chapter 3 (pp. 7-14)
- Stata demonstration: Data (GSS96_small.dta) Stata program (simple.do)
- In-class demonstration - Stata program (intermediate.do)
Week 9: Finding Data and Intro to Univariate Analysis
No reading, but browse the following sites and become familiar with the offerings:
- Freedman et al. Chapters 3 and 4
Week 10: Univariate Analysis
- Freedman et al. Chapters 5, 6 and 7
- Stata program (advanced_recodes.do)
- Lab 3 distributed in class
- Stata program (two_variables.do) Data (auto.dta)
Part III: Bivariate and Multivariate Analyses
Week 11: Logic of Hypothesis Testing
- Freedman et al. Chapters 8 and 9
- Freedman et al. Chapters 17, 18 and 26 (through page 488)
Week 12: Correlation
- Freedman et al. Chapter 26 (488-500), Chapter 28, Chapter 29
- RMKB: The T-Test
- No Class - Administrative Holiday
Week 13: The T-Test and Chi-Square Test
- Freedman et al. Chapters 10, 11 and 12
- STATA program (t-test.do) Data (auto.dta) (grades.dta)
- Myers and Well chapter on Regression (in reader)
Regression Chapters from "Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics" - STATA programs (chisquare.do) (chi2dist.do)
Week 14: Lab
- In class: Lab 4: Hypothesis Testing with STATA
- Data (nlsw88_lab.dta)
- No class - Thanksgiving Holiday
Week 15: ANOVA and Regression
- Regression examples and discussion
- No additional reading
- STATA program (anova.do)
- Course Review
- Finalization of what data you will be using on the final exam (one option is the GSS data that we will provide)
- STATA program (regress.do)
Week 16: Course review, Take-Home Exam Distributed in Class
- No class meeting
- No class meeting.
- Final Exam distributed
FINAL EXAM DUE: Thursday, December 16th at 11:59PM
Optional dataset for final exam (if not using your own data): GSS_1974.dta