PSYC 2101: Statistics in the Social Sciences
This course provides an overview of the basic descriptive and inferential statistical techniques used in the analysis of social science research data. Students become familiar with organizing and analyzing data, communicating research results, translating statistical jargon into meaningful English, and understanding basic theories underlying statistics, such as elementary probability theory.
Objectives
After successfully completing this course, you will be able to effectively use techniques in descriptive and inferential statistics. After having internalized the concepts underlying each technique, you should be able to accurately apply the appropriate technique to solve problems involving:
- Various scales of measurement
- Frequency distributions, tables, and graphs
- Percentiles and percentile ranks
- Measures of central tendency
- Measures of variability
- z-scores
- Probability
- Sampling distributions
- Hypothesis testing
- t-tests confidence intervals
- Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)
- Correlation and regression
- Chi-square
- Various statistical techniques for ordinal data
Course outline
PSYC 2101: Statistics in the Social Sciences includes the following five parts
- Part 1: Introduction and Descriptive Statistics
- Part 2: Foundations of Inferential Statistics
- Part 3: Inferences About Means and Mean Differences
- Part 4: Correlations and Regression
- Part 5: Nonparametric Tests
Required text and materials
Students will receive the following:
- Gravetter, F. J., Wallnau, L. B., Forzano, L. B., & Witnauer, J. E. (2021).
Essentials of statistics for the behavioral Sciences (10th ed.). Nelson.
Type: Textbook. ISBN 9780357365298
Additional requirements
Calculator is required.
Assessments
Please be aware that due to COVID-19 safety guidelines all in-person exams have been suspended. As such, all final exams are currently being delivered through ProctorU, which has an approximate fee of $35 involved. There will be more information in your course shell, on how to apply, if your course has a final exam.
To successfully complete this course, you must achieve a passing grade of 50% or higher on the overall course and 50% or higher on the mandatory final exam.
The following table illustrates how your final grade will be determined for this course.
| Assignment 1: Introduction and Descriptive Statistics | 8% |
| Assignment 2: Foundations of Inferential Statistics | 10% |
| Assignment 3: Inferences About Means and Mean Differences | 16% |
| Assignment 4: Correlations and Regression | 8% |
| Assignment 5: Nonparametric Tests | 8% |
| Final Exam (mandatory) | 50% |
| Total | 100% |
Open Learning Faculty Member
An Open Learning Faculty Member is available to assist students. Primary communication is through the "mail" tool in the Learning Environment or by phone. You will receive the necessary contact information when you start your course.