70 Introductory Module: Statistics & Methods Timetable Module Code: PSYC640 Module Level: MSc No. of Credits: 30 Course Convenor: Dr. Laurence Alison Teaching Staff: Dr. Alison, Prof. Canter, Dr. Lovie, Dr. Downes, Dr.Stott This module is designed to refresh students‟ memories of basic principles of research design and to introduce some basic concepts and ideas to students unfamiliar with such material. It will also prepare students for some of the more complex material to be covered in semester 2 (advanced statistics) as well as introduce them to the range and breadth of qualitative approaches available for research. The central aims of this module are to demonstrate different approaches and perspectives on research design, statistics and qualitative methods and illustrate the benefits of an awareness of these different perspectives. Students should be aware that the majority of their learning should occur outside of the lectures, where approximately 1 hour of lecturing equates to 6 hours independent study time. During these periods students will be required to work on projects, collect materials for research and prepare reading for subsequent lectures. Students should consult with their respective supervisors with regard to project proposals and the onus is on the student to develop a project in consultation with their chosen supervisor. Supervisors available include Dr. Alison, Dr. Lovie and Dr. Stott, although students are encouarged to „team‟ up with potential PhD supervisors and other members of staff. Dr. Alison should be the first point of contact in this regard. Lectures start at 11.00 and finish at 12.00 on Wednesday mornings and begin on 2 nd October, 2002. The last lecture in this module will be on 11 th December. Most lectures are followed up by a practical. Practical sessions occur on a Thursday afternoon at 14.00 and last approximately 2 hours. For many of these sessions you will be given data that you can work with outside of the practical session so that you may practice analysing the material and familiarising yourself with SPSS. The prupose of these sessions is to give you hands on experience of working with data, in preparation for your first assignment and as a means by which you can gain some confidence to handle more sophisticated statistical procedures in the advanced statistics module. Assessments (handing in of the assignment and taking the short question and answer exam) will occur in the first two weeks of term, thereby enabling students plenty of time for revision and for completion of their assignments. A short statistics handbook will be provided at the start of the course and students should also take advantage of the web based statistics helper "statistics for the terrified" available through the computer 71 unit on the network. The Dancer and Reidy and Bryman books will be particularly useful as guides for quantitative and qualitative research texts. The aims of the module are as follows:  Introduce students to basic principles of experimental design.  Introduce the notion of hypothesis testing & behavioural sampling.  Familiarise students with descriptive statistics, correlations and associations, nonparametric tests and parametric tests.  Introduce the analysis of naturally occurring language and biographical methods.  Introduce unobtrusive measurement, content analysis and ethnographic research.  Introduce open, semi structured and structured interviewing as well as focus groups. Students will gain an understanding of the principles underlying both quantitative and qualitative research. They will appreciate how these approaches are not in conflict and how they are associated with issues of gathering material for analysis. They will understand how the approaches may be used in combination or isolation and will have garnered a basic understanding of behavioural observation, ethnography, interviewing skills and content analysis. They will also understand and appreciate the importance of research ethics and issues of confidentiality and debriefing. The module relies on lectures and practical work. Students will be supported by close supervision on a research assignment in which they will be expected to collect their own data (for example, through interviewing, observational methods or analysis of archival records), analyse it and write it up as a written report. Detailed verbal and written feedback will be given on this report. Sessions will also involve the students in the dialogue, by requiring them to prepare material in advance of each lecture and present their perspectives in class. Assessment will be based on an examination in early January (25% of the mark for this module) and an assignment (75% of the mark for this module), due in by the 16 th of January. If either or both components are failed students may resubmit or retake the exam within 2 weeks of original notification of failure. The key text books for the module are: Bryman, A. (2001). Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press. Dancey, C. & Reidy, J. (1999). Statistics Without Maths for Psychology Using SPSS for Windows. Prentice Hall: Essex. Howell, D.C. (2002). Statistical Methods for Psychology. (5 th ed). Duxbury. Robson, C. (1993). Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner – Researchers. Blackwell: Oxford. 72 WEEK 1 (2 nd Oct) STRATEGIES AND TACTICS FOR RESEARCH Professor Canter Research in a professional context has special demands.  Relevance  Timeliness  Within Resources, especially time available  Robust  Explicability So researchers need to be aware of the full range of strategies and tactics on which they can draw in order to cope with those demands. Each strategy has its own rules and its own way of being good or bad. They also carry with them implications for the form of analysis that is most appropriate. Strategies for research are the overall plan of how the research is organised or designed.  Case Studies  Relational Studies  „Natural‟ Experiments  Controlled Experiments None of these is to be confused with „Consultancy‟ or „Action Research‟ which can draw on all of them. Tactics for research are the particular modes of intervention with the subjects of the research. It is here that issues of reliability and validity are most crucial.  Qualitative Approaches  Qualitative Scales  Structured Questionnaires  Performance Measures References Canter,D. (1994) Psychology in Action: Selected Writings of David Canter Dartmouth Especially Chapter 2 “The Holistic Organic Researcher” Canter,D. (2000) Seven assumptions for an investigative environmental psychology. in S. Wapner, J.Demick, T. Yamamoto, & H.Minami. (eds) Theoretical Perspectives in Environment-Behavior Research: Underlying assumptions, research problems, and methodologies. New York: Plenum pp 191 – 206 Robson, C. (1993). Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner- Researchers. Blackwell: Oxford PRACTICAL (3 rd October) Signing on to the network, entering data, basic descriptive statistics. (See handbook) 73 WEEK 2 (9 th Oct) DIFFERENCES IN DATA I (WILCOXON AND T-TESTS) Dr. Lovie A basic introduction to the experimental approach, with particular emphasis on exploring differences in data. Two sample tests for ordinal (rank) and interval data and for unrelated and related samples (Wilcoxon and t-tests). References Dancey, C. & Reidy, J. (1999). Statistics Without Maths for Psychology Using SPSS for Windows. Prentice Hall: Essex. Howell, D.C. (2002). Statistical Methods for Psychology. (5 th ed). Duxbury. PRACTICAL (10th October) Descriptive stats. (See handbook) WEEK 3 (16 th Oct) DIFFERENCES IN DATA II (KRUSKAL WALLIS, FRIEDMAN AND ANOVAS) Dr. Lovie Analysis for single factor designs for ordinal (rank) and interval data and for unrelated and related samples (Kruskal-Wallis, Friedman and ANOVAs for independent and repeated measure designs). This session concerns the analysis of differences in data. References Dancey, C. & Reidy, J. (1999). Statistics Without Maths for Psychology Using SPSS for Windows. Prentice Hall: Essex. Howell, D.C. (2002). Statistical Methods for Psychology. (5 th ed). Duxbury. PRACTICAL (17th October) T- tests, Wilcoxon and Mann Whitney. (See handbook) WEEK 4 (23 rd Oct) DIFFERENCES IN DATA III Dr. Lovie ANOVAs for independent and repeated measure designs. Analyses for multi factor designs for interval data and for unrelated and related samples (ANOVAs for independent and repeated measure designs). This session considers the analysis of differences in data. References Dancey, C. & Reidy, J. (1999). Statistics Without Maths for Psychology Using SPSS for Windows. Prentice Hall: Essex. 74 Howell, D.C. (2002). Statistical Methods for Psychology. (5 th ed). Duxbury. PRACTICAL (24 th October) ANOVAS. (See handbook) WEEK 5 (30 th Oct) STUDY WEEK This time should be devoted to considering assignments and speaking to research supervisors. Students should also use the opportunity to catch up on reading and preparing materials for subsequent week‟s lectures. WEEK 6 6 th Nov CASE STUDY DESIGN Dr D.Montaldi. This session will consider the principles involved in case study design. The session will discuss problems associated with ethical, practical and theoretical concerns associated with the analysis of the materials. Reference Bryman, A. (2001). Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press. No Practical this week WEEK 7 (13 th Nov) QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: AN OVERVIEW Dr. Alison An introduction to qualitative research. This session will outline a brief historical account of qualitative research, the main „players‟ in the field and the extent to which it either contributes to or stands in opposition to quantitative measurement. This lecture will also identify the methodological framework and highlight the limits and benefits of unobtrusive or non-reactive measurement. Students will explore how different types of information are used by research psychologists in a way similar to that advocated by methods popular with researchers in the 1960s (for example, Webb, Campbell, Schwartz and Sechrest, 1966) and included the examination of physical traces, archival material and simple observation. Included in this exploration will be an assessment and examination of a variety of studies employing similar methods. The lecture will illustrate how the work developed by Webb et al. (1966) echoes the limitations and benefits within such research activity. Students will be asked to  Think of the range of materials available for research  Think of the limitations of such materials  Consider the distortions that such material may be subject to 75  Over the course of day work on material in preparation for an in house seminar. There will be additional time allocated in Thursday‟s practical session. Objectives  To introduce students to the concept of unobtrusive measurement.  To highlight the benefits and limitations of such material.  To demonstrate how physical trace, archival and observational studies can help inform studies of human behaviour. References Campbell, D. T. (1957). Factors relevant to the validity of experiments in social settings. Psychological Bulletin, 54, 297-312. E. J. Webb, D. T. Campbell, R. D. Schwartz, and L. Sechrest, (1966). Unobtrusive Measures: Non Reactive Research in The Social Sciences. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company. Bryman, A. (2001). Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press. PRACTICAL (14 th November) Short seminar preparation. Students will be asked to run an in house seminar and present their work and observations of their chosen non-reactive approaches to research. This practical session should be used as a basis for preparing the seminar. (see handbook) WEEK 8 (20 th Nov) Professor David Canter MULTIVARIATE ANALYSES, MDS & SORTING TASKS An introduction to multivariate analyses, with a particular emphasis on sorting tasks. Canter,D. (1994) Psychology in Action: Selected Writings of David Canter Dartmouth. Especially the chapter by Canter and Groat. PRACTICAL (21 st November) Student Seminar. Students will conduct their seminar on „Qualitative Research: An Overview‟ (see handbook) WEEK 9 (27 th November) INTERVIEWING AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS An overview of interviewing methods (structured, semi structured, open, focus groups etc). Dr. Alison will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each approach through examples, highlight the practical and ethical considerations in conducting interviews and illustrate the potential richness of interview material for discourse analysis. Reference Bryman, A. (2001). Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press. 76 PRACTICAL (28 th November) Dr. Alison Students will be expected to conduct an interview (of approximately 30 minutes) with a participant of their choice on a topic of their choice (to be agreed in advance with Dr. Alison). Students will use this material as the basis for the session on content analysis (week 11) so it is important that the interview is transcribed for analysis in that session. Dr. Alison will be available for consultation. WEEK 10 ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH Dr. Stott (4 th December) This lecture will focus on the range of methods available to researchers when adopting an ethnographic approach to their research. It will highlight the complex, unpredictable and sometime dangerous nature of this methodology and discuss the various strategies that are available for researchers to overcome the difficulties of accessing populations and data. The lecture will use existing and ongoing research to relate conceptual issues to practices in the field and demonstrate how 'taking sides' and adopting positions of 'neutrality' in respect to criminal activity are sometimes a necessary component of the research process. Reference: Drury, J & Stott, C. (2001) Bias as a research strategy in participant observation: the case of intergroup conflict. Field Methods. 13, 47-67. PRACTICAL (5 th December) Dr. Alison Students will use this time to work with their interview material in preparation for week 11. WEEK 11 CONTENT ANALYSIS Dr. Alison (11 th December) Dr. Alison will introduce students to the concept of developing coding frameworks for converting complex, naturally occurring information into data for analysis. Students will have been asked previously to collect some naturally occurring examples of language and discourse and will be asked to construct content analysis dictionaries to examine the material. Issues such as clarity in definitional systems, reliability and theoretical meaning will be considered in this session. Reference Bryman, A. (2001). Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press. 77 PRACTICAL Dr. Alison (12 th December) Students will present their findings from the interview material in class. EXAMS & ASSIGNMENTS Assignments to be handed in 16 th January. Exams will take place 15 th January. . 10 ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH Dr. Stott (4 th December) This lecture will focus on the range of methods available to researchers when adopting an ethnographic approach to their research. It will. (2001). Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press. No Practical this week WEEK 7 (13 th Nov) QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: AN OVERVIEW Dr. Alison An introduction to qualitative research. . A short statistics handbook will be provided at the start of the course and students should also take advantage of the web based statistics helper " ;statistics for the terrified" available