Sociology 526a

Quantitative Methods in Sociology

Professor Linda J. Andes

Email: andes@siu.edu

Office: Faner 3425

Phone: 453-7622

Office Hours: Monday, Wednesday 3:30 to 5:30pm;

Thursday 2:30 to 4:30pm; or by appointment

Description: This course will acquaint students with basic statistical methods used by sociologists and other social scientists. We will cover descriptive statistics, which clarify patterns found in data, and inferential statistics, which relate patterns found in sample data to both the larger population and to theoretically derived hypotheses. Successful students will become both intelligent consumers of statistical information and able producers of statistical analyses in their own research. The course also introduces students to SPSS: a popular statistical software packages for the social sciences.

Text: Agresti, Alan and Barbara Finlay. 1997. Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences. Third edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Grading: Homework & 2 quizzes 40%

Midterm Exam 30% Wednesday, March 20, 1:00-2:50pm

Final Exam 30% To be announced....

Homework: Learning statistics is not a spectator sport: the only way to learn the material is to do statistics. Homework will include pencil-and-paper exercises, computer analysis problems and interpretation of statistical results. Homework will be graded on a 3 point scale: with a "3" indicating an exceptional level of performance, a "2" indicating the expected level of performance and a "1" indicating a minimal level of performance. Grades for late assignments will automatically be reduced by one point.

You are encouraged to HELP each other on homework assignments, but I expect the work you hand in to be your own. Of course, if you have questions or need assistance, I also encourage you to see me during my office hours or send me email. I will usually need to see some kind of SPSS output, code or error statements in order to answer your questions - please bring them along or include them in your email.

Exams: Exams will be open-book and open-notes, and will include multiple choice, short answer and computational exercises. It is my policy to grade to criterion; if you learn the material well you receive an A. I do not grade on a "curve" so students are not in competition with each other for a limited number of high grades.

Other stuff: You will need a calculator that can (at least) add, subtract, multiply, divide, calculate squares and square roots, and save the sum of a sequence of numbers.