Foundations in Applied Statistics (FiAS Intensive)

Beginners

This foundational course is for graduate students who have no prior training in statistics.

Topics covered include: the notion of variables and how they are measured; ways of describing the central tendency and the dispersion of a variable; and the principles of hypothesis testing and statistical significance. The course also introduces students to the software Stata. The day consists of a lecture, and a computer lab session with exercises in Stata.

Bookings

All students wishing to book a place on this module must complete the SSRMC Skill Check before a place can be booked for them.

Students that have already completed the Skill Check may have had a place booked for them by their Department. Students can check this by typing their CRSid into the search box at the very top right of this page, hitting the enter key then clicking on their name. This will show all module(s) that they are booked onto, as applicable.

Students for whom this module is not compulsory can make a booking via the Basic Statistics Stream Booking Form on the SSRMC website.

In cases where you have a problem or a clash, please contact the SSRMC Administrator who will try to help you.

This module is designed for MPhil and PhD students as part of the Social Science Research Methods Centre (SSRMC) training programme - a shared platform for providing research students with a broad range of quantitative and qualitative research methods skills that are relevant across the social sciences.

• Completion of the SSRMC Skill Check before the first session
• To use the Titan Teaching Room computers you must bring your password for the Desktop Services system. Please note, your password for the Desktop Services system is distinct from your Raven/department/email password. If you are uncertain about this you are advised to go to the University Computing Service Helpdesk before the first day of class or find out more on the UCS Newcomers page.
• Enrolment on this module's Moodle course page: How to Enrol on Moodle

Number of sessions: 2

• Variables
• Measurement
• Summary Statistics
• Samples
• Statistical Models
• Significance Tests,
• Reproducibility
• Using Stata

Presentations, demonstrations and practicals

Stata on MCS

• One online exercise [optional, dependent upon department]
• The SSRMC encourages all students to take the assessment

Some useful textbooks providing detailed coverage of the essential basics of statistics are:

• Bram, U. 'Thinking Statistically'. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
• Bryman, A. 'Social Research Methods'. Oxford: OUP.
• Field, A. Discovering Statistics Using IBM SPSS Statistics. London: Sage.
• Howell, David C. (2007), Statistical Methods for Psychology. Belmont: Wadsworth (chapters 1 through 5)
• Levin, Jack and James Alan Fox (2003), Elementary Statistics in Social Research, Boston: Pearson (chapters 1 through 6)
• Smithson, Michael (2000), Statistics with Confidence London:Sage (chapters 1 through 6)

All students are expected to give feedback for each module they take...

At the end of each module, students will be sent a link to a very short evaluation form. They will also be able to find this link on the Moodle page for their course. The survey takes a few minutes to fill in, and can even be done on a mobile phone. Students that do not respond to the survey the first time, will receive regular automated reminders until the survey is completed.

Students will not be given certification or proof of attendance for any module for which they have not provided feedback.

• To gain maximum benefits from the course it is important that students do not see this course in isolation from the other MPhil courses or research training they are taking.
• Responsibility lies with each student to consider the potential for their own research using methods common in fields of the social sciences that may seem remote. Ideally this task will be facilitated by integration of the SSRMC with discipline-specific courses in their departments and through reading and discussion.

8 hours - A morning lecture and an afternoon lab session

This is an intensive, one-day module

Once a year

• Foundations in Applied Statistics (FiAS-6)
• Basic Quantitative Analysis (BQA-6)
• Doing Multivariate Analysis (DMA 3)
• Further Topics in Multivariate Analysis (FTMA) 2