Education 150X: Fall 2005
Introduction to Data Analysis and Interpretation
Monday and Wednesday, 11:00-12:50
Location: Cubberley 334
Instructor: Ann Porteus
Email: aporteus@stanford.edu
Office Hours: TBA
Office: Cubberley, Rm. 320
Work Phone: 723-0794 (no messages)
Home Phone: 858-2230 (best)
T.A. Graciela Borsato
Email: gborsato@stanford.edu
Office Hours: TBA
T.A. Su Jin Gatlin
Email: suj@stanford.edu
Office Hours: TBA
Overview:
The purpose of this course is to provide you with a rudimentary understanding of basic research
design and data analysis to help you read and understand research literature. No previous
experience in statistics or data analysis is expected. The course is designed with a focus on you as
a consumer of the research literature, not as the person doing the research (although you will get
some suggestions about that as we go along). The course is designed to teach you concepts; it is
not designed to teach you how to do statistics and thus it will not focus on statistical formulas or
computation. The course will involve reading, writing and in class practice on basic research and
statistical concepts and models.
Students enrolled in this course are strongly recommended to take the 1 unit SPSS workshop
(SPSS is a statistical software package). The SPSS workshop (Education 401A) will meet 5
times through the quarter on Mondays 4:15-6:05. The workshop is designed to give you some
hands-on experience with data manipulation through a statistical software package. (See dates
below. More details about this workshop will be discussed in class.)
Course Goals:
Students will leave the course with:
• A solid understanding of basic concepts of good research design.
• A solid understanding of basic concepts of data analysis (basic descriptive statistics and
inferential statistics) and interpretation.
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150X-Fall 2003
• A demonstrated awareness of basic strengths and weaknesses of research studies.
• Confidence to regularly read the methods and analysis sections of reports/articles in addition to
the introduction and discussion sections.
Course Culture:
The underlying assumption of the course is that students learn from listening to and teaching
other students. The benefits to you and to others in the course depend on your:
• Active involvement in and contributions to class discussions
• Keeping up with the course materials/readings
• Willingness to raise questions
• Willingness to invest yourself in your learning (including coming to office hours or
review sessions when appropriate)
• Willingness to help in other's learning (i.e., sharing what you know (and what you don't
know))
• Willingness to provide constructive feedback
Course Structure:
We will cover one major topic each week (see course content below). The ordering and the time
spent on each topic may be adjusted as we go along. The course meets twice a week for 1 hour
50 minutes. The course consists of lectures, and small group work within a largely interactive
lecture format. Expect some flux. TAs will run weekly review sessions for practice and
clarification where needed.
BlackBoard is the course management tool used to organize course materials: the syllabus,
practice materials, course announcements, updates, last minute readings, writing assignment
instructions, and the like will all be placed into the Blackboard system.
(http://blackboard.stanford.edu)
Course Content:
• Course Overview and Reading a Research Article
• Basic Research Design
• Descriptive Statistics
• Correlation
• Reliability and Validity
• Basics of Inferential Statistics and Significance Testing
• One and Two Sample Statistical Tests
• One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)
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• Testing Correlation Coefficients
• Simple and Multiple Linear Regression
Because this course is taught conceptually (using words, visuals, and numbers); almost no
formulas are used. For those for whom seeing formulas is your preferred learning style, there are
many basic statistics books available in the Library.
Course Readings:
To succeed in this course you need to keep up with the readings. You will get the most out of the
class if you go through the required readings before , and review the readings after , the relevant
topics are covered in class. Lectures are designed to supplement the reading, not repeat or
replace the readings. You will need both lectures and readings in order to do well in your
assignments.
Text (SU Bookstore and one copy on 2-hour reserve in Cubberley Library):
Huck, Schuyler W. (2004, 4th Edition). Reading Statistics and Research. Pearson.
Basic Statistics Texts
For those of you interested in formulas and calculations, you might want to look at a very basic
text book. The following are some suggestions:
Coladarci, Theordore, et.al. (2004). Fundamentals of Statistical Reasoning in Education. John
Wiley & sons, Inc.
McCall, Robert B. (2001) Fundamental Statistics for Behavior Sciences. 8th Edition,
Wadsworth- Thomson Learning.
Welkowitz, Joan, Ewen, Robert B., Cohen, Jacob (2000). Introductory Statistics for the
Behavioral Sciences, 5th Edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
There is always “Statistics for Dummies” from the Dummy series, and other humorous texts
(“The Cartoon Guide to Statistics”) ….the Stanford Bookstore or Cubberley Library have
quite a few basic texts.
More advanced:
Shavelson, Richard (1996). Statistical Reasoning for the Behavioral Sciences, 3rd Edition,
Allyn and Bacon.
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Course Requirements:
Course Grade:
You may take the course for a letter grade or CR/NC (must be decided by the University deadline
–November 6.) . Your course grade will be a combination the following:
Class Participation: You are expected to attend and contribute to class discussions.
Readings: You are expected to do the required readings, which should be evident
through your class participation and your writing projects.
Writing Projects: There are three writing projects. These writing assignments are
designed to help you become critical consumers of research by engaging you in analysis
and integration of the concepts you are learning in class and through the course materials.
Supplemental Assignments: Periodically, there will be some small assignments
designed to prepare you for some of the course content.
Late Policy and Incompletes:
Deadlines for the three writing assignments are firm. If you have a very special circumstance that
prevents you from meeting a deadline, you need to discuss with me. I will not be giving any
incompletes for this course. In other words, all work must be completed by the end of the course.
Review Sessions/Office Hours/Getting Help:
The course T.A.s will be offering weekly review sessions. In addition, office hours are
considered an important vehicle for your learning. We will determine office hours based on
schedules of people who are in the course. We encourage using office hours as a place to stay
caught up, to clarify concepts discussed in class, concepts discussed in the text, and web
practices.
Homework/Writing Projects
These assignments are all open book and must be done on your own under the University's honor
code. You may not discuss the writing projects with other students until after you have turned
them in. Papers will be sent as email attachments, commented on through the Word “Tracking”
feature, and returned via email attachment.
When you send your paper as an attachment, use the following file name convention for your
paper:
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Lastnamefirstinitialpaper1.doc (or whatever paper number it is).
For example: SmithBpaper1.doc
Project #1 (due Monday, 10/24 by noon)
A take-home assignment. Analysis of a journal article covering the content of the course
to date. (Graded for progress (plus, check, minus) only).
Project #2 (due Tuesday 11/14 by noon)
A take-home assignment. Analysis of a journal article covering the content of the course
to date. (Graded)
Project #3 (due Monday, 12/12 by noon)
A take-home assignment. Analysis of a journal article covering the content of the course
to date. (Graded)
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Course Outline (subject to change)
The material in the course will be presented over the course of 10 weeks, organized around 3
basic topics: Basics of Research Design, Descriptive Statistics, and Inferential Statistics.
Week
Topic
Required Reading
9/26 & 28
Reading a
Research Article
and Basic
Research Design
Huck , Chapter 1: "The Typical
Format of Journal Articles", pp. 116.
McMillan (On Web), Questions for
evaluating research, pp. 53-55, 101102, 139-140, 313-315, 353-354
(“Tools B”)
Mertens, (On Web), Questions for
evaluating research, pp. 54-55,
81-82, 101-102, 139-140, 280-281,
325-326, 365. (“Tools A”)
Shavelson (On
Web), "
Research and
the Role of
Statistics", pp.
3-8.
10/3 & 5
Descriptive
Statistics
Ruiz-Primo, Mitchell, Shavelson
(On Web), Research design basics,
pp 11-13, 14,-16, 17-24.
Huck, Chapter 5; Types of samples,
pp 105-118.
Huck, Chapter 2: "Descriptive
Statistics: The Univariate Case",
pp.17-46.
Shavelson (On Web), “Disparity in
Women’s and Men’s College
Grades”
Huck (Handout),
"Principles of
Research
Design", pp.
577-609. (1996)
10/10 & 12
Correlation
Huck, Chapter 3: "Bivariate
Correlations", pp.48-73.
10/10
SPSS Workshop
#1: SPSS Descriptive
Statistics
10/17 & 19
Reliability and
Validity
Huck, Chapter 4: " Reliability and
Validity ", pp. 75-97.
Liddel, et. al. (On Web), “The
Measure of Moral Orientation”
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Supplemental
Optional: Owen (On
Web). “Selfdirected Learning
Readiness….”
10/17
SPSS Workshop
#2: Correlation
*10/24
Writing Project
#1 due by noon
10/24 & 26
Estimation and
Hypothesis
Testing
10/31 & 11/2
One or Two
Huck, Chapter 10: “Inferences
Sample
Concerning One or Two Means”
Significance Tests
pp. 233-244 (bottom); 248-249;
Huck, Chapter 8: Effect Size,
Power, Cis, and Bonferroni, pp.
179-186 (bottom); 196-205 (top)
Huck, Chapter 10: “Inferences….”
(Con’t); 252-264.
11/7 & 9
One-Way
ANOVA
11/7
SPSS Workshop
#3: One and two
sample t-tests
*11/14
Writing Project
#2 due by noon
11/14 & 16
Testing
Correlation
Coefficients
11/14
SPSS Workshop
#4: ANOVA
Huck, Chapter 5: “Foundations of
Inferential Statistics, pp. 99-122
(review what has already been
read about samples).
Huck, Chapter 6: “Estimation”, pp.
125-143.
Huck, Chapter 7: Hypothesis
Testing, pp. 145-177.
Huck, Chapter 11: “One-way
Analysis of Variance” pp. 267292.
Huck, Chapter 10: “Inferences….”
pp. 244 (bottom)-247 (mid).
Huck, Chapter 12: “Post-hoc and
Planned Comparisons” pp. 295315.
Huck, Chapter 9: “Statistical
Inferences Concerning Bivariate
Correlation Coefficients”, pp. 207230.
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Week 11/21
Thanksgiving
No classes all week
11/28 & 30
Simple Linear
Regression
Huck, Chapter 16: “Bivariate,
Multiple and Logistic Regression”
pp. 416-438 (mid); 448-451.
12/5 & 7
Multiple Linear
Regression
12/5
SPSS Workshop
#5: Correlation
and Regression
*12/12
Writing Project
#3 due by noon
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