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| Douglas Smith | |
| 104 Grise Hall | Phone: (270) 745-2152 |
| Department of Sociology | Email: Douglas.Smith@wku.edu |
| Western Kentucky University | Webpage: www.wku.edu/~Douglas.Smith/ |
| 1906 College Heights Blvd. #11057 | |
Office Hours: Daily 1:30-3:00 or by appointment |
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This course is intended to help you learn how to program and understand the syntax of SPSS and SAS. These are two of the main statistical analysis programs that sociologists use to analyze quantitative data. We will learn the commands that will allow one to enter data into the program, analyze the data for outliers and data entry mistakes, perform simple crosstabs and t-tests, and perform regression analyses. If we get some time, we will move on to consider more advanced forms of regression based analysis.
If you have data that you want to analyze using the techniques covered in this course, you are welcome to do that. GSS and other kinds of data are also available for use.
This course is intended to help students gain confidence in performing quantitative data analysis with SAS and SPSS. During the course, I plan to teach as many "tricks of the trade" as we can cram in. As we move on we will devote considerable time to applying the various statistical techniques to substantive research questions.
A CD of readings will be provided.
Attendance, exercises, and class assignments.
The weighting is as follows:
Class Attendance and Participation
39%
Daily Exercises 29%
3 Assignments 32%
| 8-June | 9-June | 10-June | 11-June |
| Intro to Multivariate Statistics | Pre-Analysis Data Screening | ANOVA and ANCOVA | Multiple Regression |
| 15-June | 16-June | 17-June | 18-June |
| Nonlinear Relationships | Path Analysis | Factor Analysis | |
| Nonadditive Relationships | Reliability Analysis | ||
| 22-June | 23-June | 24-June | 25-June |
| Discriminant Analysis | Cluster Analysis | Analysis of Cross-Classified Data | Logistic Regression |
| (a.k.a. Loglinear) | |||
Finally, my standard disclaimer:
| DISCLAIMER | The university may have adopted a business model; however, education is NOT a business. Moreover, the syllabus is not some sort of sacred contract (at the very least, the course calendar is not a sacred contract), but more along the lines of a road map. The readings in the course calendar are places we are scheduled to visit. Anyone who has taken a preplanned road trip or vacation knows that the trip is not fun unless you stop at interesting roadside attractions even though they might divert from your original route or time table. It's the process of getting there that is fun/relaxing/intriguing. In that light, the above schedule and procedures for this course are subject to change in the event of extenuating circumstances. | DISCLAIMER |