Description : The course is an introduction to the basic concepts of descriptive statistics and the quantitative research approach. The basic aim of the teaching subject is for undergraduate students to get to know and familiarize themselves with the analysis and presentation of research data collected during the investigation of social phenomena.
Learning objectives
Upon successful completion of the course, the student will be able to:
- Recognizes observational data and distinguishes the type of variables in quantitative research.
- Performs basic descriptive statistics and creates frequency tables.
- Selects and draw an appropriate graph to present the distribution of a variable.
- Describes the relationship between two variables.
- Performs basic data analysis procedures in a computing environment.
- Presents the results of the analysis he carried out linking them to the research question.
- Designs the study of educational issues by choosing appropriate research tools.
- Analyses data using the necessary technologies.
Outline : Course outline:
The course includes the following sections:
- Introduction to quantitative educational research methodology. Level of measurement, independent and dependent variables, control variables.
- Distribution of a qualitative variable, data binning, and frequency tables.
- Graphical representation of the distribution of the variables, bar, histogram, stem and leaf plots
- Descriptive statistics of a quantitative variable, measures of central tendency, measures of variability.
- Normal distribution, measures of shape, outliers, cumulative distribution function, transformations, standardized values.
- Contingency table of two qualitative variables, correlation coefficients, dependent and independent samples.
- Covariance and correlation of two quantitative variables, Pearson and Spearman coefficients, scatter plots, simple linear regression. Method of Teaching:
Lectures and labs, face-to-face and group work. To support the course and for each teaching meeting, slides and other supporting material will be posted on the course support page "eclass".
Attendance of the lectures is not compulsory. If students choose to attend labs, attending labs is mandatory.