University of Houston
QUANTITATIVE METHODS I
PUBL 6410
YUASA
Fall 2014
Tuesday 5:30 – 8:30pm
M116
Version 1.0 (subject for change)
Instructor:
Office:
E-mail
Phone:
Office Hours:
Toshiyuki Yuasa, Ph.D.
312 B-PGH
toshi@uh.edu
713-743-3931
by appointment only
The subject of this course is quantitative methods in public affairs. It includes
learning the concepts of probability, statistics, and application of those concepts. Students
will come to understand the ways in which one can carry out critical assessment or
evaluation of proposed/published arguments, interpretations, beliefs, solutions, policies,
programs, or theories. This course provides students skills to perform applied statistical
analyses and to generate an argument with solid reasoning backed up with quantitative
evidences. In practice, the scientific base reasoning can help many public administrator and
policy makers to convince the stakeholders about his or her policy recommendations.
Textbooks
Required
Pollock, Philip H. Jr. 2014. An R Companion to Political Analysis, Thousand
Oaks: CQ Press/Sage Press.
Levitt, Steven D. and Stephen J. Dubner. 2005. Freakonomics: A Rogue
Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New York: William Morrow.
Silver, Nate. 2012. The Signal and The Noise. New York: The Penguin Press.
Yuasa, Toshiyuki. 2012. Applied Statistics with R. Draft (in dropbox).
Recommended
Lau, Joe Y. F. 2011. An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Creativity: Think
More, Think Better. New York: Wiley (E-book available at UH-Anderson
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library)
*Or any introductory Critical Thinking book
Other required readings are available at the course dropbox.
Software
R (Gui JGR-Deducer and RCommander)
http://rforge.net/JGR/files/
University Policies
Academic Honesty Policy (http://www.uh.edu/provost/policies/uhhonesty_policy.html)
Academic Accommodations for Students with Disability
(http://www.uh.edu/provost/fac/Policy_disab.html)
*If you need special accommodation to meet any of the requirements of this course,
please contact me by the second class session.
Grades and Grading Policy
Final Grades will be comprised of the following components:
1. Midterm Exam:
30% of the total grade
2. Assignments:
30% of the total grade
3. Term Paper:
30% of the total grade
4. Quizzes:
10% of the total grade
Attendance
If you miss three class sessions without my approval, I will take out all of your
participation points. Also please avoid being late for class since it is very disturbing to the
other students. A student being late for class frequently will lose his or her participation
points.
Quiz
The Moore et al textbook website provides online quizzes. I will assign the textbook
online quizzes for “Quizzes” grade.
Quiz Website:
http://bcs.whfreeman.com/psbe3e/#613741__616655__
When you register for the quizzes site, you are asked to identify your Professor’s email
address. Use toshi@uh.edu.
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Pop-up Quiz
There are few pop-up quizzes given randomly at the beginning of class session. The
purpose of the quizzes is to encourage students to read the course materials.
Examinations
There will be one exam during the course of the semester. Exam questions will be based
on information covered in the assigned reading materials as well as material presented
during class lecture.
Students must provide sufficient justification for missing an exam (it must be a documented
emergency) to be entitled to qualify for a makeup exam. It is the responsibility of the
student to contact the instructor (by voice mail if necessary) on or before the date of the
missed exam in order to arrange for a make-up.
It is possible that the midterm exam consists with two parts: in-class portion (Testing lab)
and take home portion. If the take-home portion is provided, the question document
will be posted by the midnight of September 29th. The submission due date of your
take-home exam answers is October 7th before the class time (5:30PM).
Exam Date (Midterm in-class portion)
Where: Classroom
Date: September 29th (5:30PM to 7:00PM)
Assignments
There will be several assignments over the course of the semester. For data analyses,
students are using assigned statistical tool(s) and to provide a written report of their
findings. Both assignment documents and data sets are available from our class
Blackboard. If the data exceed the upload capacity of blackboard, I will send you via email.
With no exceptions, assignments must be turned in at the beginning of class on the day
they are due. Late homework will not be graded. Those students who miss class on the days
in which homework is assigned will not be given an extension to complete that assignment.
Term Paper
Each student picks a dataset relating his or her area of interests. There are various
datasets available at iPoll (Roper Center), ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for
Political and Social Research), CPS (Current Population Survey), NHIS (National Health
Interview Survey), and others. Of course, you can use the dataset collected by your
organization. Throughout the course, I assign an analysis report on your data set as a part
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of weekly assignments. At the end of the semester, you can put together your data
analysis reports to complete your term paper.
The style of reference:
Use your preferred reference style such as MLA, Chicago, etc.
You will make presentation on your paper in class on December 2nd.
The due date for your term paper submission is December 9th.
Schedule of Lectures and the Corresponding Readings
Introduction (Lecture series 0)
Critical Thinking and Social Inquiry
Readings:
Lau, Joe Y. F. 2011. An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Creativity: Think
More, Think Better. New York: Wiley (E-book available at UH-Anderson library)
Chapter 1 through 13 and 19.
Social Inquiry
Jasso, Guillermina. 2004. "The Tripartite Structure of Social Science Analysis."
Sociological Theory 22: 401-31.
Jasso, Guillermina. 1988. "Principles of Theoretical Analysis." Sociological
Theory 6: 1-20.
Freakonomics, Introduction, Chapter 1 through 3.
Lecture Series 1: Statistics for Public Manager and Policy Analysts
Levitt and Dubner. Freakonomics, Chapter 4.
Hoover, Kenneth R. The Elements of Social Scientific Thinking. St Martin Press.
Chapter 1, 2, and 3.
O’Sullivan, Elizabethann, Gary R. Rassel, and Joceyn Devance Taliaferro. 2011.
Practical Research Methods for Nonprofit and Public Administrators. New York:
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Longman. Chapter 1, Research in Public and Nonprofit Programs
Derr, Janice. 2000. Statistical Consulting: A Guide to Effective Communication.
Pacific Grove: Duxbury Press. Chapter 7 Communicating about Statistics
Statistics for Public Administration: Practical Uses for Better Decision Making.
ICMA Press. Chapter 1: You Have to Answer a Question – Now What Do You
Do?
Data Analysis
Introduction to R using JGR/Deducer and Rcdmr (with RStudio)
Yuasa documents for R/JGR instruction ((Dropbox R instruction folder)
Pollock, R chapter 1
Muenchen, Robert A., and Joseph Hilbe. 2010. R for Stata Users. New York:
Springer. Chapter 2. Installing and Updating R
Recommended:
Morton, Sally C., and John E. Rolph. 2000. Public Policy and Statistics: Case
Studies from RAND. New York: Springer. (Dropbox)
*Read only Policy Problem Questions, Research Questions, and Statistical
Questions sections in the following chapters: chapter 1,2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.
Lecture Series 2: Looking at Data
Required Readings
Pollock, Philip H. III. 2003. The Essentials of Political Analysis. Washington
D.C.: CQ Press. Chapter 1. The Measurement of Concepts; Chapter 3. Describing
Variables and Making Comparison
Berman, Evan M. 2006. Essential Statistics for Public Managers and Policy
Analysts, 2nd edition. Washington D.C.: CQ Press. Chapter 2: Univariate
Analysis - Description
O’Sullivan, Elizabethann, Gary R. Rassel, and Joceyn Devance Taliaferro. 2011.
Practical Research Methods for Nonprofit and Public Administrators. New York:
Longman. Chapter 5, Analyzing Performance Measure
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Nigro, Lloyd G., and William L. Waugh, Jr. 1998. "Workplace Violence Policies
of U.S. Local Governments." Public Administration Quarterly 22: 349-64.
(Frequency table)
Graph basics
More, David S. 2003. Statistics: Concepts and Controversies. New York:
W.H.Freeman. Chapter 10 Graphs, Good and Bad; Chapter 11 Describing
distribution with Numbers
Recommended readings
Huff, D. and I. Geis (1993). How to lie with statistics, WW Norton & Company.
Chapter 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9
Data Analysis
Required readings
Pollock, R chapter 2 and 3
Yuasa documents for R/JGR instruction folder (Dropbox R instruction folder)
Assignment 1 (download assignment documents and datasets from Assignment folder in
Dropbox)
Lecture Series 3: Describing Data and Looking at Data—Relationship and Causality
Required readings
Levitt and Dubner. Freakonomics, Chapter 5 and 6.
Silver. Introduction
Berman, Evan M. 2006. Essential Statistics for Public Managers and Policy
Analysts, 2nd edition. Washington D.C.: CQ Press. Chapter 4: Measures of
Association & Chapter 6 Regression I (page 116-123)
Pollock, Philip H. III. 2003. The Essentials of Political Analysis. Washington
D.C.: CQ Press. Chapter 7: Correlation and Regression (Page 144-155)
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Pelech, WilliamStalker Carol A. Regehr CherylJacobs Marilyn. 1999. "Making
the Grade: The Quest for Validity in Admissions Decisions." Journal of Social
Work Education 35: 215-26. (Correlation)
Kopczynski, Mary, and Michael Lombardo. 1999. "Comparative Performance
Measurement: Insights and Lessons Learned from a Consortium Effort." Public
Administration Review 59: 124-34. (Regression Analysis)
Heckman, James J. 2005. "The Scientific Model of Causality." Sociological
Methodology 35: 1-97. (Causality)
Lau, Joe Y. F. 2011. An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Creativity: Think
More, Think Better. New York: Wiley (E-book available at UH-Anderson library)
Chapter 14 through 15.
Recommended readings
Huff, D. and I. Geis (1993). How to lie with statistics, WW Norton & Company.
Chapter 7
For preparing to write your term paper and presentation
Spurrier, John D. 2000. The Practice of Statistics: Putting the Piece Together.
New York: Duxbury. Chapter 12, 13, and 14
Hunter, David H. 2009. A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking: Deciding What to
Do and What to Believe. New York: Wiley.
Hoover, Kenneth R. The Elements of Social Scientific Thinking. St Martin Press.
Chapter3
Data Analysis
Pollock, R chapter 8
Yuasa documents for R/JGR instruction ((Dropbox R instruction folder)
Assignment 2 (download assignment documents and datasets from Assignment folder in
Dropbox)
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Lecture Series 4: Producing Data: Design of Experiments, Sampling Design, Toward
Statistical Inference, Ethics
M, M, D & S Chapter 3: Producing Data
Introductory presentation of the topics
Moore, David S. 2003. Statistics: Concepts and Controversies. New York:
W.H.Freeman. Chapter 2 Samples, Good and Bad; Chapter 3 What Do
Samples Tell Us?; Chapter 4 Sample Surveys in the Real World; Chapter
5 Experiment, Good and Bad; Chapter 6 Experiments in the Real World
Planning Research and Research Design
Campbell, D.T., and H. Laurence. Ross. 1968. "The Connecticut Crackdown on
Speeding: Time Series Data in Quasi-Experimental Analysis." Law & Society
Review 3: 33-54.
Johnston, Jocelyn M. 1998. "Changing State-Local Fiscal Relations and School
Finance in Kansas: Pursuing "Equity"." State & Local Government Review 30:
26-41.
Haddon Jr, William, Preston Valien, James R. McCarroll, and Charles J.
Umberger. 1961. "A Controlled Investigation of the Characteristics of Adult
Pedestrians Fatally Injured by Motor Vehicles in Manhattan." Journal of Chronic
Diseases 14: 655-78.
Vernon, L. Smith. 1982. "Microeconomic Systems as an Experimental Science."
The American Economic Review 72: 923-55.
Measurement
Sacks, Jeffrey J. Krushat MarkNewman Jeffrey. 1980. "Reliability of Health
Hazard Appraisal." American Journal of Public Health 70: 730.
Brudney, Jeffrey L., F. Ted Hebert, and Deil S. Wright. 1999. "Reinventing
Government in the American States: Measuring and Explaining Administrative
Reform." Public Administration Review 59: 19-30.
http://www.urban.org/publications/204812.html
Survey
Dillman, Don. A., Jolene D. Smyth, Leah Melani Christian. 2009. Internet, Mail,
and Mixed Mode Surveys: The Tailored Design Method. New York: Wiley.
Chapter 2, 3, and 8.
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Dorofeev, Sergey, and Peter Grant. 2006. Statistics for Real-Life Sample Survey:
Non-Simple-Random Samples and Weighted Data. New York: Campbridge.
Chapter 1 Sampling methods
Asher, Herbert. 2001. Polling and The Public Opinion: What Every Citizen
Should Know, fifth edition. Washington D.C.: CQ Press. Chapter 2 Problem of
Nonattitudes; Chapter 3 Wording and Context of Questions; Chapter 4 Sampling
Techniques; Chapter 5 Interviewing and Data Collection Procedures
Nardi, Peter M. 2003. Doing Survey Research: A Guide to Quantitative Methods.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Chapter 4: Developing a Questionnaire
O’Sullivan, Elizabethann, Gary R. Rassel, and Joceyn Devance Taliaferro. 2011.
Practical Research Methods for Nonprofit and Public Administrators. New York:
Longman. Chapter 12, Community Needs Assessment
Non-randomized study
Welch, Susan. 1975. "Sampling by Referral in a Dispersed Population." The
Public Opinion Quarterly 39: 237-45. (nonprobability sampling)
Dealing with endogeneity problem:
Antonakis, John, Samuel Bendahan, Philippe Jacquart, and Rafael Lalive. 2012.
"Causality and Endogeneity: Problems and Solutions." In The Oxford Handbook
of Leadership and Organization, ed. David Day. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Guo, Shenyang, Richard P. Barth, and Claire Gibbons. 2006. “Propensity score
matching strategies for evaluating substance abuse services for child welfare
clinents, Children and Youth Services Review, 28: 357-383
Case studies
Morris, Carl N. and Jennifer L. Hill. 2000. “The Health Insurance Experiment:
Design Using the Finite Selection Model,” in Morton, Sally C., and John E.
Rolph. 2000. Public Policy and Statistics: Case Studies from RAND. New York:
Springer. (Chapter 2)
Abrahamse, Allan F. 2000. “Counting the Homeless: Sampling Difficult
Populations, in Morton, Sally C., and John E. Rolph. 2000. Public Policy and
Statistics: Case Studies from RAND. New York: Springer. (Chapter 3)
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The data analysis assignment and Journal articles of this section’s reading are
downloadable from this course Blackboard.
Data Analysis
Yuasa documents for R/JGR instruction ((Dropbox R instruction folder)
Assignment 3 (download assignment documents and datasets from Assignment folder in
Dropbox)
Lecture Series 5: Probability and Distributions
Silver. Chapter 1 through 4
Pollock, Philip H. III. 2003. The Essentials of Political Analysis. Washington
D.C.: CQ Press. Chapter 4. The “How Else?” Question: Making Controlled
Comparisons; Chapter 8. Thinking Empirically, Thinking Probabilistically
Thurman, Paul W. 2007. MBA Fundamentals: Statistics. New York: Kaplan.
Chapter 2. Measuring and Managing Uncertainty
Lowry, Richard. 1989. The Architecture of Chance: An Introduction to the Logic
and Arithmetic of Probability. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lau, Joe Y. F. 2011. An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Creativity: Think
More, Think Better. New York: Wiley (E-book available at UH-Anderson library)
Chapter 17.
The data analysis assignment and Journal articles of this section’s reading are
downloadable from this course Blackboard.
Data Analysis
Yuasa documents for R/JGR instruction ((Dropbox R instruction folder)
Assignment 4 (download assignment documents and datasets from Assignment folder in
Dropbox)
Lecture Series 6: Statistical Inference
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Pollock, Philip H. III. 2003. The Essentials of Political Analysis. Washington
D.C.: CQ Press. Chapter 2 Explanation and Hypotheses; Chapter 5 Sampling and
Inference; Chapter 6 Tests of Significance and Measures of Association
Pritchard, Anita, and Parsons Sharon Kay. 1999. "The Effects of State Abortion
Policies on States' Abortion Rates." State & Local Government Review 31: 43-52.
Kopczynski, Mary, and Michael Lombardo. 1999. "Comparative Performance
Measurement: Insights and Lessons Learned from a Consortium Effort." Public
Administration Review 59: 124-34. (Regression Analysis)
Pelech, WilliamStalker Carol A. Regehr CherylJacobs Marilyn. 1999. "Making
the Grade: The Quest for Validity in Admissions Decisions." Journal of Social
Work Education 35: 215-26. (Correlation)
The data analysis assignment and Journal articles of this section’s reading are
downloadable from this course Blackboard.
Data Analysis
Yuasa documents for R/JGR instruction ((Dropbox R instruction folder)
Power Test
Download G*Power http://www.psycho.uniduesseldorf.de/abteilungen/aap/gpower3/
Assignment 5 (download assignment documents and datasets from Assignment folder in
Blackboard)
Lecture Series 7: Topics in One-Way/Two-Way Analysis of Variance and Nonparametric
Tests
Pollock, Philip H. III. 2003. The Essentials of Political Analysis. Washington
D.C.: CQ Press. Chapter 6 Tests of Significance and Measures of Association
(135-142)
Norris, Donald F., and Kenneth L. Kraemer. 1996. "Mainframe and PC
Computing in American Cities: Myths and Realities." Public Administration
Review 56: 568-76. (Contingency Table)
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Data Analysis
Pollock R book. Chapter 4 to 7
Yuasa documents for R/JGR instruction ((Dropbox R instruction folder)
Lecture Series 8: Topics in Inference for Regression and Multiple Regression
Silver. Chapter 5 (overfitting), 6 (outliers)
Pritchard, Anita, and Parsons Sharon Kay. 1999. "The Effects of State Abortion
Policies on States' Abortion Rates." State & Local Government Review 31: 4352. (Multiple Regression)
Adamchak, Donald J., Leonard E. Bloomquist, Kent Bausman, and Rashida
Qureshi. 1999. "Consequences of Population Change for Retail/Wholesale
Sector Employment in the Nonmetropolitan Great Plains: 1950–19961." Rural
Sociology 64: 92-112. (Multiple Regression)
Using Dummy Variable
Hardy, Melissa A. 1993. Regression with Dummy Variables. Newbury Park:
Sage.
Pollock, Philip H. III. 2003. The Essentials of Political Analysis. Washington
D.C.: CQ Press. Page 155-158: Dummy Variable
Johnston, Jocelyn M. 1998. "Changing State-Local Fiscal Relations and School
Finance in Kansas: Pursuing "Equity"." State & Local Government Review 30:
26-41. (using Dummy Variables)
Assessing Interaction effect
Brambor, T., W. R. Clark, et al. (2006). "Understanding Interaction Models:
Improving Empirical Analyses." Political Analysis 14(1): 63-82.
Diagnosing Problems
Haughton, Dominique, and Janathan Haughton. 2011. Living Standards
Analytics: Development through the Lens of Household Survey Data. New York:
Springer. Chapter 2.
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The data analysis assignment and Journal articles of this section’s reading are
downloadable from this course Blackboard.
Data Analysis
Yuasa documents for R/JGR instruction ((Dropbox R instruction folder)
Pollock R book. Chapter 8 (revisit this chapter for inference)
Chapter 9 (Regression with dummy variables and interaction effects)
Assignment 6 (download assignment documents and datasets from Assignment folder in
Blackboard)
Lecture Series 9: Logistic/Probit Regression
M, M, D & S Chapter 17
Fox, John. 2002. An R and S-Plus Companion to Applied Regression. Thousand
Oaks: Sage. Chapter 5 (155 to 172)
Pollock, Philip H. III. 2009. The Essentials of Political Analysis. Washington
D.C.: CQ Press. Chapter 9 Logistic Regression
Hosmer, D. W., and Stanley Lemeshow (2000). Applied Logistic Regression.
New York, Wiley. Introduction
Dodson, Anthony L. 1998. "Interstate Compacts to Bury Radioactive Waste: A
Useful Tool for Environmental Policy?". State & Local Government Review 30:
118-28. (Probit)
Diagnostic for Generalized Linear Models
Fox, John, and Sanford Weisberg. 2010. An R Companion to Applied Regression,
Second Edition. Sage Press. Chapter 6
Case studies
Morton, Sally, and John E. Rolph. 2000. “Racial Bias in Death Sentencing:
Assessing the Statistical Evidence,” in Morton, Sally C., and John E. Rolph. 2000.
Public Policy and Statistics: Case Studies from RAND. New York: Springer.
(Chapter 5)
Fairlie, Robert W., and Rebecca A. London. 1997 “The Effect of Incremental
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Benefit Levels on Births to AFDC Recipients” Journal of Policy Analysis and
Management 16(4): 575-597.
The data analysis assignment and Journal articles of this section’s reading are
downloadable from this course Blackboard.
Data Analysis
Yuasa documents for R/JGR instruction ((Dropbox R instruction folder)
Pollock R book. Chapter 10
Assignment 7 (download assignment documents and datasets from Assignment folder in
Blackboard)
December 2nd (Last day for this class)
Student paper presentation
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