SOC 602 APPLICATIONS OF ADVANCED RESEARCH METHODS
Fall, 2003
Dr. Julie A. Honnold
Course Goals
The goals of this course are: (1) to enable you to apply
the quantitative data analysis skills you have learned in SOCY 508 and SOCY
608, (2) to give you experience in developing and conducting a complete
quantitative analysis using SPSS, (3) to improve your ability to present and
discuss quantitative data analyses, and (4) to assist you in your
forward movement toward the completion of a thesis proposal by the end of the
semester.
Texts
The following texts are available at the VCU Bookstore:
SPSS 11.0 Guide to Data
Analysis, Marija J. Norusis. Prentice-Hall,
2002.
From Numbers to Words, Susan E. Morgan, Tom Reichert, and Tyler R. Harrison. Allyn & Bacon, 2002.
Assignments and Grading
Your grade in the course will be based on:
(1)
Quantitative data
analysis project
The written product for this course will be a report
analyzing quantitative data either downloaded from the General Social Survey (GSS)
website
(www.icpsr.umich.edu/gss) or from
an available data set of your choice (e.g., one relevant to your thesis
topic). You must develop several
research hypotheses to guide your effort.
The hypotheses and the variables contained therein must be amenable to
the following three major types of analyses: univariate (e.g., frequency
distributions, measures of central tendency and dispersion, charts, as
appropriate), bivariate (e.g., crosstabulations, correlations, t-tests, as
appropriate), and multivariate (multiple regression).
For those using GSS data, we will start this process by looking at the
codebook on the GSS
website, so you can get a sense of the questions that have been asked on the
surveys. After (or in the process
of) identifying your variables, you will develop your
research hypotheses. We will devote some class time for those who are
using the GSS to the process of downloading your data.
Throughout the semester, you will be creating a syntax
file in SPSS to do univariate, bivariate, and multivariate analyses of your data.
We will also discuss data presentation and interpretation for your written research report.
We will be working throughout the semester on data analysis
and reporting, using materials in Norusis and Morgan, et al. (see course
schedule). Your report should include
the following sections: (1)
Introduction, (2) Research Hypotheses, (3) Methods, (4) Results, (5)
Conclusions.
(2) Oral class
presentation on research methods/data analysis techniques
You will be required to make
two class presentations about research methods or data analysis techniques of
interest to you. Ideally, these
will be topics that are directly relevant to writing your thesis proposal.
For example, if you think you will be doing a content analysis, you may
want to make a presentation on the methodology of content analysis as it
applies specifically to your thesis topic.
You are not restricted to a topic that applies to your thesis, however.
In your presentation, you should go beyond an elementary level methods
text level and focus on issues that might arise in the application of the
technique. I don’t have a rigid
time limit for this, but most presentations will last about 10 minutes.
(3)
Regular class presentations of progress on your thesis proposal
I will ask you to give brief updates of progress on your
thesis proposal every other Monday. My
hope is that this will be beneficial to you by giving you feedback on your
ideas and (frankly) by putting some pressure on you to make progress that you
can report! I will be evaluating
how much progress you are making and how coherently you present your ideas.
Office Hours
My office hours for fall semester are Monday 10-12 and Tuesday 1-2. I will make every effort to be in my office (room 201) during those times, but can’t absolutely guarantee that I will be there, since I may have to attend meetings occasionally at the Survey and Evaluation Research Laboratory. However, I’m around a lot and not usually hard to find. Feel free to drop in any time to see if I can chat for a while. My office phone number is 828-2200. My e-mail addresses are jahonnol@vcu.edu or jhonn@mail1.vcu.edu or jhonn@saturn.vcu.edu. (Use any one or all. Guess that shows I've been around for a while!)
COURSE SCHEDULE
The entries on this schedule describe the topics we will be covering in the computer laboratory portion of the course, which is intended to acquaint you with the mysterious workings of SPSS. Though SPSS allows you to do "point and click" data analysis, I cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance of running your analyses from syntax files. These are text files that contain the SPSS commands that control your analyses. You will be using syntax files to run all of your analyses. When you have downloaded your data, please send me the data set as an e-mail attachment. Then when a section of the quantitative research report is due (see schedule below), turn in a hard copy of the section and email me the SPSS syntax file that you used to generate your results. I should be able to generate the results you report in the text by running the syntax file on your data set.
The topics on this schedule will almost definitely change,
depending on the needs of class members’ particular projects.
I will announce changes either in class or by email.
|
DATE |
TOPIC |
MORGAN |
NORUSIS |
|
Aug.
25 |
Introduction to
course Discussion of
class members' thesis topics and progress |
Chs. 1 and 2 |
|
|
Sept.
8 |
Introduction to
SPSS |
|
Chs. 1, 2, 3 |
|
|
Downloading GSS
data and creating an SPSS data file (Instructions in Course Documents) |
|
|
|
|
The glory of
SPSS syntax files |
|
|
|
Sept.
15 |
Quantitative
Data Analysis Research Hypotheses Due |
|
|
|
|
Working with
variables in SPSS (and the continued glory of SPSS syntax files) |
|
Appendix B |
|
|
Basic
univariate analysis |
|
Chs. 4, 5 |
|
|
Use of SPSS
Custom Tables procedure in univariate analysis |
|
|
|
|
Frequency
Distribution Table Formats (Course Documents, Data Analysis Documents) |
Ch. 8 (Using
tables, What should be contained in a table, Constructing tables –
frequency) |
|
|
|
Charts and
Graphs |
Ch. 8 (Using
charts, graphs, and figures) |
Appendix A |
|
|
Index
Construction, Reliability, and Validity |
|
Appendix B |
|
Oct.
6 |
Crosstabulation
and Simple Scatterplots |
Ch. 8
(Constructing tables – bivariate) |
Chs. 8 |
|
|
Bivariate
Crosstabulation Table Formats (Course Documents, Data Analysis
Documents) |
|
|
|
Use of SPSS
Custom Tables procedure in bivariate analysis |
|
|
|
|
|
Chi-square and
Measures of Association for Crosstabulations |
|
Chs. 17, 19
|
|
|
Effect Size
Statistics and Goodman and Kruskal’s tau-y
(Course Documents, Data Analysis Documents) |
|
|
|
Oct.
20 |
Comparing Group
Means and Exploring Distributions |
|
|
|
|
Introduction to
Inferential Statistics |
|
Chs. 10 |
|
|
Testing
Hypotheses about Means |
Ch. 7 (z
and t tests only) |
Chs. 12, 14
|
|
|
T-test Table
Formats (Course Documents, Data Analysis Documents) |
|
|
|
|
Draft
of Univariate Statistics Section of Quantitative Data Analysis Project
Due |
|
|
|
Oct.
27 |
Topic to be
determined - Might be an opportunity for you to use most of the class
period to work on your quantitative project |
|
|
|
Nov.
3 |
Linear
Regression and Correlation |
Ch. 8
(Constructing tables – correlational analyses) |
Chs. 20 |
|
|
Inference for
percentages and correlations |
|
|
|
|
Bivariate
Correlation Table Formats (Course Documents, Data Analysis Documents) |
|
|
|
Nov.
10 |
One-Way
Analysis of Variance |
Ch. 8 (ANOVA
tables) |
|
|
|
Two-Way Analysis of Variance |
|
|
|
Nov.
17 |
Draft
of Bivariate Statistics Section of Quantitative Data Analysis Project
Due |
|
|
|
|
Introduction to
Multiple Regression |
|
|
|
|
Interpreting
Multiple Regression Results |
|
|
|
Nov.
24 |
Building
Multiple Regression Models |
Ch. 7 (Multiple
regression only) Ch. 8
(Constructing tables – multiple regression) |
|
|
|
Potential
Problems with Multiple Regression |
|
|
|
|
Multiple
Regression Table Formats (Course Documents, Data Analysis Documents) |
|
|
|
Dec.
1 |
Topic –
whatever comes to mind that might be useful.
Suggestions welcomed! |
|
|
|
|
Draft
of Multiple Regression Section of Quantitative Data Analysis Project
Due |
|
|
|
Dec.
8 |
No class
meeting (final exam week). Quantitative
Data Analysis Report Due |
|
|