The following list of topics and assignments presents the planned schedule for LIS 397.1 in Spring 2003. If changes occur in this schedule, you will be informed of them.
The text, Statistics Explained: A Guide for Social Science Students, by Perry R. Hinton, is referred to below as "Hinton"; the text, The Survey Research Handbook: Guidelines and Strategies for Conducting a Survey, by Pamela L. Alreck and Robert R. Settle, is referred to as "Alreck and Settle"; and the book that provides examples and problems together with solutions, Schaum's Outlines of Theory and Problems on Beginning Statistics, by Larry J. Stephens, is referred to as "Stephens."
Reading assignments represent reading to be done before the class meeting in which they are listed (except for Meeting 1, whose reading assignment you should do soon after the first class meeting). In addition to the required reading assignments listed in this schedule, you should note that the "Recommended Texts" section of the Course Description contains sources that can provide extra help if you are having difficulty with a topic, and the References for LIS 397.1 contain further sources of additional information and help.
Recommended exercises are suggested for your practice in developing familiarity with statistical concepts and techniques, and should be done after the lecture in which the topics of the exercises are introduced. You should work at least one exercise from each group of exercises under the various Solved Problems sections of Stephens, and you work through enough exercises in each group of exercises to feel confident that you understand what is being done and why. Feel free to make use also of the Supplementary Problems section of each chapter. The exercises are not to be turned in (after all, the answers are provided); the objective is for you to learn from them.
Specific dates for the written assignments (the book review, the research proposal, and the written critique of published research) are also set forth below.
Important Note: Please note that the exercises in Stephens are provided with answers. This means that the task of learning from these exercises is unambiguously placed on you, and you alone. Clearly, you can glance at a problem and jump immediately to its answer, and by doing so you may learn a bit. Or, much better, you can read a problem and think for yourself about the answer without looking at the book's answer; and then, after getting your own answer, you can compare your answer with the book's answer. This second way of studying will help you learn much more, but the burden is on you to study in such a way as to learn the material. No answers will be provided for you on the quizzes or on the examination on the statistical topics.
In working the exercises in Stephens for yourself, you may use a calculator and/or a spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel, Lotus 1-2-3, or Quattro Pro, all of which include basic statistical functions among their capabilities. Please note that in spreadsheets, the sample and population versions of the standard deviation and variance functions have different names. (As examples, in Excel, the sample standard deviation is denoted by STDEV and the population standard deviation by STDEVP. Similarly, in Excel, the sample variance is denoted by VAR and the population variance is denoted by VARP.) The names do not necessarily make it obvious whether the function is the sample or the population version, and you should use the online help or the manual to make sure which function is which. Be sure to use the different functions appropriately. Similar remarks apply to using calculators (e.g., the sample standard deviation is often represented on calculator keyboards by the Roman alphabet lower-case "s" and the population standard deviation by the Greek alphabet lower-case sigma [a symbol that most browsers cannot represent]). Note also that where Stephens talks about using Minitab to solve problems, you are expected to use Excel (or your preferred spreadsheet).
Separately from this schedule, you will be given a set of exercises to be carried out on a calculator or in a spreadsheet, to check your understanding of what you have learned from the exercises in Stephens.
Meeting 1 (January 15)
Topics: Overview of LIS 397.1. What is research? "Science" vs. "Problem Solving."
Reading Assignment: Chapters 1 - 3 of Hinton. Chapters 1-3 of Stephens.
Writing Assignment: Choose a book from the General Readings in Science for LIS 397.1 and begin reading it. Your review of the book you choose will be due at the seventh class meeting.
Meeting 2 (January 22)
Topic: Introduction to social surveys.
Reading Assignment: Chapters 1 - 3 of Alreck and Settle.
Group Assignment: Formation of groups (5-7 students each) for developing, administering, and reporting on survey projects.
Meeting 3 (January 29)
Topics: Introduction to basic statistical measures: measures of location (central tendency) and measures of variability (dispersion). Comparison of descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Sampling.
Reading Assignment: Chapters 4 - 6 of Hinton. You should skim Chapter 4 of Stephens to get a general idea of its contents, although the probability-theoretic approach to statistics is not emphasized in LIS 397.1. The LIS 397.1 Website discussion of Guidelines for Research Proposals.
Recommended Exercises for Meetings 3 through 6: In Stephens, choose from among the Solved Problems: all the groups of problems on pp. 7-10; the Histogram problems, pp. 28-29; the Stem-and-Leaf Displays problems, pp. 32-33; the Measures of Central Tendency and Measures of Dispersion problems for Ungrouped Data, pp. 50-53; the Z Scores, Measures of Position, and Interquartile Range problems, pp. 55-57; all the problems from the group concerning the Normal Probability Distribution up to (but not including) the group concerning the Normal Approximation to the Binomial Distribution, pp. 130-134; the Using Random Number Tables problems, pp. 152-153; and the Shape of the Sampling Distribution and the Applications of the Sampling Distribution problems, pp.157-158.
Explore the capabilities of Excel (or your chosen spreadsheet program) for doing random sampling.
Writing Assignment: Begin thinking about a topic for your exercise in writing a research proposal. Your research proposal is due at the eleventh class meeting. (Note: In the research proposal you are to write, I do not expect or want you to prepare a cost estimate or a planned schedule of implementation. In a real-life proposal, cost estimates and implementation schedules are, of course, necessary. But their development requires a different kind of mental effort and different data-gathering tasks from what is required by the development of a logically sound analysis of a problem, its associated hypothesis or hypotheses, and a plan for how to test the hypothesis [i.e., a plan for investigating the truth or falsity of the hypothesis]. I want your efforts in LIS 397.1 to be concentrated on this latter kind of development.)
Meeting 4 (February 5)
Topics: More about measures of location and variability. The Gaussian (normal) distribution. Introduction to confidence intervals for the population mean.
Reading Assignments: Chapter 5 of Stephens, omitting the sections beginning with "Binomial Probability Formula" on p. 93 through "Hypergeometric Probability Formula" ending on p. 100. The LIS 397.1 Website discussions of Public Opinion Polling and Using the Gaussian (Normal) Distribution for Approximations.
Recommended Exercises: Continue working on the exercises recommended under Meeting 3. In Stephens, choose from among the Solved Problems: the Point Estimate, Interval Estimate, and Confidence Interval problems, pp. 175-176; the t-Distribution, Confidence Interval (Small Samples) and Confidence Interval (Large Samples) problems, pp. 177-178.
Meeting 5 (February 12)
Topics: Developing questionnaires and interview schedules. Group meetings (in class time) to work on survey projects.
Reading Assignments: Chapters 4 - 6 of Alreck and Settle.
Recommended Exercises: Continue working on the exercises recommended under Meetings 3-4.
Meeting 6 (February 19)
Topics: More on probability distributions and confidence intervals. Quiz on basic measures. How to write a research proposal.
Reading Assignments: Chapters 6 - 8 of Stephens. The LIS 397.1 Website discussions of Questions about Population Means and Proportions, The t-Deviation and z-Deviation Formulas, and Guidelines for Research Proposals.
Recommended Exercises: Finish working on the exercises recommended under Meetings 3-4.
Meeting 7 (February 26)
Topics: Philosophy of tests of statistical hypotheses. The t-test procedure.
Reading Assignments: Chapters 7 - 9 of Hinton.
Recommended Exercises: In Stephens, choose from among the Solved Problems: the Null Hypotheses, Test Statistics, Type I and II Errors, and Hypothesis Tests (Large Samples) problems, pp. 202-204; the P Values and Hypothesis Tests (Small Samples) problems, pp. 205-206; the Estimation and Testing Hypothesis problems, pp. 235-236; and the Estimation problem, p. 239.
Writing Assignment: Your review of a book from the General Readings in Science for LIS 397.1 is due at this class meeting.
Meeting 8 (March 5)
Topics: More on questionnaires and interview schedules. Collecting and processing survey data. Group meetings (in class time) to work on survey projects.
Reading Assignments: Chapters 7 - 9 of Alreck and Settle.
Spring Break (March 12)
Meeting 9 (March 19)
Topics: The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) procedure.
Reading Assignments: Chapter 12 of Stephens.
Chapters 10 - 13 of Hinton. Since Excel does not provide tools for carrying out such techniques as the Tukey and Scheffé tests or the repeated-measures ANOVA procedure, you should read Chapters 12 and 13 simply to gain an understanding that such techniques exist. They are widely used, and are available in many statistical-analysis programs, such as SAS and SPSS.
The LIS 397.1 Website discussions of ANOVA and Evaluating Reports of Research.
Recommended Exercises: In Stephens, choose from among the Solved Problems: the Building One-Way ANOVA Tables problem (omit the exercise based on Problem 12.9), p. 294. In Stephens, you are also encouraged to work through Supplementary Problems numbers 12.33 and 12.34 on pp. 303-304.
Writing Assignment: Begin looking for an article (no more than 3 years old) to be the subject of your research critique. The article should be from the research literature of LIS or (with my approval in advance) from the research literature of another professional field of interest to you. Your critique is due at the thirteenth class meeting.
Meeting 10 (March 26)
Topics: The chi-square procedures. Quiz on the principles of tests of statistical hypotheses.
Reading Assignment: Chapter 19 of Hinton. Note: You are encouraged to read Chapters 14-18 of Hinton, but in LIS 397.1 we lack the time to delve into the techniques discussed there.
Recommended Exercises: In Stephens, choose from among the Solved Problems: the Observed and Expected Frequencies problems, p. 262; the Sampling Distribution problems, p. 265.
Meeting 11 (April 2)
Topics: Interpreting and reporting results of surveys. Group meetings (in class time) to work on survey projects.
Reading Assignments: Chapters 10-12 of Alreck and Settle.
Writing Assignment: Your research proposal is due at this class meeting.
Meeting 12 (April 9)
Topics: Correlation procedures and their uses. The regression procedure.
Reading Assignment: Chapters 20-22 of Hinton. Chapter 13 of Stephens. You should also skim Chapter 14 of Stephens to gain a general awareness of the existence of non-parametric statistical procedures.
Recommended Exercises: In Stephens, choose from among the Solved Problems: the Straight Lines, Linear Regression Model, and Least Squares Lines problems, pp. 322-323; and the Linear Correlation Coefficient and Inference problems, p. 328.
Meeting 13 (April 16)
Topics: Review of the statistical topics covered to date. In-Class part of the Midterm Exam. When you finish the In-Class part, you will receive the Take-Home part, which will be due April 23.
Reading Assignment: A Cautionary Note: How Difficulties Can Arise from Combining Statistics
Writing Assignment: Your critique of a published report of research is due at this class meeting.
Meeting 14 (April 23)
Topics: Brief overviews of other LIS research techniques: e.g., analytic bibliography, bibliometrics, content analysis, historical research, and stylostatistics. Group meetings (in class time) to work on survey projects.
Meeting 15 (April 30)
Topic: Group reports on survey projects.
Go to Guide to Course Materials for LIS
397.1
Go to Wyllys Webpage
Last revised 2003 Apr 20