Research Methods and Statistics

Abstract

The course provides an introduction to applied quantitative research methods and data analysis used in social sciences. Students will be expected to demonstrate and apply the knowledge and skills gained from this course by conducting their own small research project: This involves data collection, data analysis using SPSS, and research report writing.

Objective

- To know and understand the most important steps of the research process (problem – research question – literature research – hypothesis – method – analysis of the results – conclusion) and the most important concepts (e.g., independent and dependent variable, third variable, confounding variable, hypotheses). - To be able to construct a research question and hypotheses based on reviewed literature. - To be able to construct the key components of a questionnaire and measure the theoretical constructs using appropriate scales. - To be able to design and conduct an experiment. - To be able to test your hypotheses using appropriate statistical analyses via SPSS, and to write up your results in a research report.

Content

- research process - data collection - data entry and data control - descriptive statistics - hypothesis testing, test of significance - correlations - T-Test, Analysis of variance (ANOVA - writing a research report - graphs and tables

Resources