Psychology 801 – Statistics I Spring 2012
Instructor: Camilo Ortiz, Ph.D.
E-mail: drcamilo.ortiz@gmail.com
Office phone: (516) 299-3754
Class meeting room: PSC Conference Room Website: http://myweb.brooklyn.liu.edu/cortiz/index.htm
Dates: 1/17/12 - 4/24/12. There will be 26 classes.
Time: Tuesdays/Thursdays from 9:45-11:00 Office Hours: Wednesday from 12:00-2:00 or by appointment
Course Description
Psychology 801 is the first part of a two-semester sequence on statistical methods. In this course, we will
review the fundamentals of descriptive and inferential statistics. We will also spend a lot of time learning
how to use the statistical computer program, IBM SPSS (version 20) to put what we learn into practice.
Objectives
1) Better understand the statistical analyses that you read in research studies.
2) Increase your readiness to take more advanced courses in statistical methods.
3) Identify the appropriate statistical procedure to be used for many research questions.
4) Feel more confident about using statistical methods to analyze data.
5) Carry out several different types of statistical analyses using SPSS.
6) Develop your analytic thinking skills.
7) Improve your APA writing skills of results sections.
Method for Assessing Student Progress & Attainment of Objectives
 Method #1 Twenty-five daily quizzes
 Method #2 Seven SPSS assignments
Method for Evaluation of Student Competency
Foundational
 Ethics: Presence of original ideas and original written work.
 Individual & Cultural Diversity: Demonstration of understanding of individual and cultural
issues in written work and classroom discussion.
 Professional Development: Evidence of responsible treatment of peers and meeting course
responsibilities.
Core Competencies
 Research & Assessment: Understanding of appropriate statistical methods depending on the
research question.
Lifelong Learning
Since the content of the field of psychology significantly changes every ten years or so, each course in the
program exposes students to “ways of knowing.” The method in this course for assessing students’ abilities
to maintain intellectual curiosity about human behavior, culture, etc is their daily quiz work and SPSS
assignments, which demonstrate students’ abilities to think creatively about statistical issues.
Required Textbooks & Articles
Field, A. (2009). Discovering Statistics Using SPSS. (3rd edition) Sage Publishing.
Pre-requisite
An introductory undergraduate course in statistics.
Study Groups
I strongly recommend that you form groups of 2-4 people to meet weekly to go over the material. If you
feel a little shaky with the topic, these groups will help you and if you are a strong student, you will learn a
great deal by teaching the material to your classmates.
Academic Integrity
A BREACH OF OUR STANDARDS OF ACADEMIC INTEGRITY CAN RESULT IN A FAILURE IN THIS COURSE AND
EXPULSION FROM THE PROGRAM. IT IS NOT WORTH IT. WHEN IN DOUBT, CONSULT THE STUDENT
HANDBOOK, GRADUATE BULLETIN, AND YOUR PROFESSORS.
From Graduate Bulletin, 2011-2012, page 13: “Plagiarism and cheating are not only serious violations of
the rules, but also may reflect adversely on the student’s reputation as well as on the reputation of the
Campus. Faculty, administrators and the student body share responsibility for academic integrity. A student
in violation of accepted academic procedures may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including
expulsion from the Campus.” (See Graduate Bulletin for full policy).
Attendance policy
Attendance is not taken for this class. As professionals, you must make your own decisions about how to
spend your time. However, missing a class means missing a daily quiz, for which there are no makeups.
Grading Scheme
Twenty-Five Quizzes: At the beginning of every class (except for the first class) you will have a short quiz
relating to the main ideas we discussed in the previous class. You will have 10 minutes to complete these
quizzes. Calculators are not required but may be helpful in some instances. These quizzes are meant to
provide you with consistent feedback throughout the semester. Of the 25 quizzes, I will take your 20
highest scores. Each quiz will be worth 3% of your final grade for a total of 60% of your final grade. There
will be no make-ups of these quizzes for any reason.
Seven SPSS Assignments: You will be required to put what you learn into practice! During the semester,
you will perform analyses that we learn in class with a set of data. If you don’t have your own data, you
may use a set of files that you can download at http://www.sagepub.com/field3e/SPSSdata.htm. Simpler
assignments will each be worth 5% of your final grade, and more complex ones will be worth 10% of your
final grade, for a total of 40%. A correct (no errors in procedures employed, implementation,
interpretation, write-up), complete, well-documented, and neat assignment receives a score of 4.5/5 (or
9/10 for an assignment worth 10 points). An assignment that goes beyond the minimum required will
receive a higher score. For example, you could perform an extra analysis or two. All SPSS assignments must
be in APA style and look like Results sections from an APA style manuscript.
All assignments should be printed double-sided.
Extra Credit: There is no opportunity to earn extra credit. Students who are struggling are strongly urged to
attend office hours on a regular basis, as soon as they notice a problem. Do not wait! Just 15 minutes per
week in office hours typically makes a big difference!
Readings
You should do the readings before the class, so that you can ask better questions. The readings should be
done with a computer running SPSS in front of you so that you can try out every step in real time.
Homework Problems
At the end of each chapter, there are homework problems (Smart Alex’s Tasks). They are just for you to
practice. These problems are diagnostic tools so that you can see if you do not understand a particular
concept. The best way to use these assignments is to try hard to complete them on your own, and if you
cannot, come to office hours and we can go through them to clear up any misunderstandings.
Late/Make-up Policy
Any work handed in past the deadline (the end of class time on the day the assignment is due) will lose one
point immediately and another point for every 24 hours. If you put a late paper in my mailbox, write the
date and time on it. If you do not, I will assume it got there right before I picked it up.
Accommodation of Disabilities
Students with disabilities who require accommodations for this course must contact the Office for Student
Disability Services. Please DO NOT request accommodations directly from the professor.
Scoring Confidentiality
When handing in or emailing assignments, please write the last 4 digits of your student ID numbers on the
assignment, instead of their name, to ensure grading fairness.
Grading Criteria
A
93-100 Total Points
Work is excellent; student not only demonstrates high achievement
but also superior intellectual initiative beyond the objectives of the course; superior test performance;
consistent superior performance across all work and tests.
A90-92.99 Total Points
Work is excellent; student demonstrates either high achievement (by
going beyond the requisites of the course) or surpasses expectations for a student at this level; clearly
demonstrates knowledge and competence beyond course requirements.
B+
87-89.99 Total Points
Work is very good; student demonstrates clear understanding of the
material and work is generally proficient and relatively free of errors; very good test performance.
B
83-86.99 Total Points
Work is acceptable; student has applied requisite understanding of the
material; acceptable test performance.
B80-82.99 Total Points
Work is acceptable but lacking precision or understanding of the
material; below average test performance.
C
73-79.99 Total Points
Work is unsatisfactory due to one or more of the following: failure to
consistently complete course assignments, inconsistent professional quality of written material, erratic in
meeting deadlines, inadequate or incomplete familiarity with key ideas, concepts and knowledge, flawed
written and verbal accounts of information. (Performance below a grade of C in any required course must
be remediated until it is determined that the student has sufficiently mastered the material to be able to
proceed with the curriculum.)
F
72.99 Total Points or Below Work is unacceptable for a graduate student; work errors greatly
exceed those of the class, student has not effectively applied knowledge at this level from readings, class;
poor performance on tests. COURSE MUST BE REPEATED.
INC
Work which, as far as it has progressed, is of B- or higher quality, but is incomplete because of
illness, accident, or other serious extenuating circumstances. All incompletes must be completed before the
end of the next semester or the grade will be automatically changed to an F. The DTC strongly discourages
incompletes. They should not be used to grant extensions without the existence of extraordinary
circumstances.
Class schedule
January 17th: Introduction & Basic Statistical Concepts
Reading:
Field Chapter 1: Sections 1.5.1.2, (Levels of measurement) 1.5.2, (Measurement error) 1.5.3,
(Validity & reliability) & 1.6.2.2 (Types of variation in statistics)
Handout from my website on basic research methodology concepts
Gould, J. (2008). gradPSYCH Extra: Get real. Feel like an imposter? You're not alone.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/07-08/imposter.aspx
January 19th: Distributions, Measures of Central Tendency, Z-scores
Reading:
Field Chapter 1.7.1 through 1.7.4 (Frequency distributions, Skew, Kurtosis, z-scores)
Handout from my website on Z-scores
Listen:
National Public Radio (NPR) story on Paul Meehl & statistical vs. clinical judgment
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1584411 (8:48 in length) We will listen in
class as well.
Daily Quiz #1
January 24th: Fitting Statistical Models, Measures of Variability (Residuals, Variance, Standard Deviation),
Degrees of Freedom
Reading:
Field Chapter 1.7.5 (Fitting statistical models) then 2.1 through 2.4.3 (Degrees of freedom)
Daily Quiz #2
January 26th: Sampling Distributions, Central Limit Theorem, Standard Error, Confidence Intervals
Reading:
Field Chapter 2.5 through 2.5.2.4 (The standard error, Confidence intervals)
Handout from my website on the standard error
Assignment #1 due today: Complete by hand and submit both Self Tests on page 38 of your text book. (5
points)
Daily Quiz #3
January 31st: Test statistics, p values, Statistical Significance, Type I & Type II errors
Reading:
Field Chapters 2.6 through 2.6.3, (Test statistics, Statistical errors) Chapter 3 (The SPSS
environment)
Article on my website: Streiner, D. I. (1996). Maintaining standards: Differences between the
Standard Deviation and Standard Error, and when to use each. Canadian Journal of
Psychiatry, 41, 498–502.
Optional
Cohen, J. (1994). The earth is round (p < .05). American Psychologist, 49(12), 997-1003.
Optional:
Watch one or more flash movie tutorials on the book’s website about how to work with
SPSS.
Movie 1: Entering Data
Movie 2: The Syntax Window
Movie 3: The Viewer Window
Movie 4: Exporting SPSS Output to Word (great for writing papers)
Movie 5: Excel
Movie 6: Importing Text
Movie 7: Selecting Cases
Movie 8: Editing Graphs
Optional:
Null-hypothesis Significance Testing: Benign or Malignant? Podcast located at:
http://behaviortherapist.podbean.com/2012/01/08/null-hypothesis-significance-testing-benign-or-malignant/
In this episode, Marc Branch, Ph.D. is interviewed about Null-hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST).
Topics discussed include:
Common misunderstandings about NHST
What p really is
Side effects of NHST
Logical problems with NHST
Reasons NHST remains prevalent despite the many known problems
Alternatives to NHST
Assignment #2 due today: With SPSS running in front of you, do everything that the author does in Chapter
3. Also, create variables in SPSS so that you can enter the data in Table 3.1 (page 72). Use the same variables
that are shown in the table, but enter your own numbers so that each of you has different data. Print out
and hand in both the data view and the variable view. (5 points)
Daily Quiz #4
February 2nd: Effect sizes, Statistical power, Clinical Significance
Reading:
Field Chapter 2.6.4 (Effect Sizes) 2.6.5 (Power), Chapter 4 (Exploring data with graphs)
Chapter 4 should be read in front of a computer running SPSS so you can do exactly what
Field does in the chapter. Just reading it without following along will not be helpful.
Optional:
Sun, S., Pan, W., & Wang, L. L. (2010). A comprehensive review of effect size:
Reporting and interpreting practices in academic journals in education and psychology.
Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(4), 989-1004. doi: 10.1037/a0019507
Daily Quiz #5
February 7th: Assessment and Treatment of Missing Data and Outliers
Daily Quiz #6
Assignment #3 due today: Using your data from the first SPSS assignment, complete “Smart Alex’s” task 1
(not task 2) from page 130. Edit all of the figures so they are easy to read and understand. In other words, do
not just send me the junky looking SPSS versions of these charts. You may need to center certain words,
add color, change the names of variables, etc. These need to be APA manuscript quality figures, so consult
the latest APA publication manual on how to properly format figures. Please cut and paste the charts into a
single Microsoft Word document. Below each figure, write a short description of what the figure shows. For a
great tutorial on how to import and edit SPSS figures in Microsoft Word, go to:
http://www.statsmakemecry.com/smmctheblog/2011/2/3/how-to-make-spss-produce-all-tables-in-apaformat-automatica.html 5 points
Optional:
Schlomer, G. L., Bauman, S. & and Card, N. A. (2010). Best practices for missing data
management in counseling psychology. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 57(1), 1-10.
February 9th: Statistical Assumptions of Parametric Data
Daily Quiz #7
Reading:
Chapter 5.1 through 5.5.3 (Exploring statistical assumptions) (Chapter 5 should be read with
SPSS running in front of you)
February 14th: Correcting Violations of Statistical Assumptions of Parametric Data, Measuring inter-rater
reliability (Chronbach’s alpha, intraclass correlations)
Daily Quiz #8
Reading:
Chapter 5.6 through 5.6.2 (Exploring statistical assumptions)
February 16th: Correcting Violations of the Statistical Assumptions of Parametric Data (cont.)
Daily Quiz #9
Reading:
Chapter 5.7 through the end of the chapter (Exploring statistical assumptions)
February 21st: No class (Monday classes meet, Tuesday classes suspended)
February 23rd: Correlation
Daily Quiz #10
Reading:
Chapter 6 (Correlation)
SPSS Assignment #4 due today: Using one of the SPSS datasets from the book’s website, making sure the
dataset has at least one categorical variable and a large number of subjects:
1) Create boxplots for at least 2 continuous variables. Describe any outliers you find.
2) Have SPSS compute skewness and kurtosis for at least 2 continuous variables
3) Compute by hand, the Z-scores of skewness and kurtosis for each of these variables (and whether it is
statistically significant)
4) Split the file for each of the 2 variables (using the categorical variable) so that you can compute Z-scores of
skewness and kurtosis for subgroups of subjects. For example, you could compute skewness and kurtosis
on the variable “income” for men and for women separately.
5) Use the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to also examine normality for each variable (including each subgroup)
6) Find at least 1 variable (possibly from other SPSS datasets from the companion website) that is not
normally distributed. Transform the variable until it appears more normal. It doesn’t have to be perfectly
normal.
7) Write up your results in paragraph format, as if you were writing the results section for a real study, strictly
sticking to APA style. All tables and figures need to be incorporated into the text as if you were writing an
APA style results section. Pay particular attention to how you are supposed to report the different types of
statistics.
Since this SPSS assignment is rather long, leave extra time. 10 points.
February 28th: Correlation cont.
Daily Quiz #11
March 1st: Correlation cont. (partial and semipartial correlation, suppressor effects)
Daily Quiz #12
March 6th: Bivariate Regression
Daily Quiz #13
Reading:
Chapter 7.1 through 7.5 (Regression)
SPSS Assignment #5 due today: Using one (or more) of the SPSS datasets from the book’s website, making
sure the dataset has at least one categorical variable:
1) Compute two Pearson’s correlation, and a point-biserial correlation (rpb). When you report the rpb you
must state which group (e.g. men) was higher on the continuous variable. Just stating the correlation,
doesn’t tell the reader much.
2) Compute two partial correlations
3) As shown on page 191 (and in the handout I will e-mail you), compare 2 correlations to
each other (e.g. men versus women) to see if they are significantly different. Note that the formula for
ZDifference in the book is wrong. Both denominator terms should have -3 in them.
4) Compute confidence intervals (see page 172 in text) for each correlation you compute.
5) Write up your results in paragraph format, strictly sticking to APA style. This assignment is short enough
that tables are probably unnecessary and results should just be reported in the text.
Important! No two students may hand in the same exact variables, although you may work together
5 points
March 8th: Introduction to Multiple Regression
Daily Quiz #14
March 13th: NO CLASS-Spring Recess
March 15th: NO CLASS-Spring Recess
March 20th: Multiple Regression cont.
Daily Quiz #15
Optional
Handout from my website on t tests
Match 22nd: Finishing Up Regression (Interpreting the SPSS Output for Regression)
Daily Quiz #16
March 27th: Comparing Two Means
Daily Quiz #17
Reading:
Chapter 9 (Comparing two means), sections 9.3 through the end of chapter 9
reread Chapter 5, sections 5.6, 5.6.1, and 5.6.2
March 29th: Introduction to ANOVA
Reading:
Chapter 10 (ANOVA) (10.1 until and including 10.2.10). Skip 10.2.3 and 10.2.4. Then read
10.5 and 10.7. When you are reading 10.5, stop after the first paragraph on page 390.
Daily Quiz #18
April 3rd: ANOVA cont. (Effect Sizes, Assumptions)
Daily Quiz #19
SPSS Assignment #6 due today: Using any of the data sets on the companion website, compare two means
using the appropriate t test (independent or dependent). For example, you could compare the mean on
some variable for men versus the mean on the same variable for women. Alternatively, you could compare
the means of two groups receiving different treatments. Make sure to check and discuss all of the
assumptions of the t test. In addition, compute and report the appropriate confidence intervals and effect
size. Once again, strictly stick to APA style and include the appropriate figures or tables, making sure that
they are also in APA style and not just cut and pasted from SPSS. Important! No two students may hand in
the same exact variables, although you may work together. 5 points
April 5th: A Priori Comparisons & Post hoc Contrasts
Reading:
10.2.11 until end of chapter (skip pages 367, 368, and most of 369) (A priori comparisons &
Post hoc contrasts)
Daily Quiz #20
April 10th: Factorial ANOVA
Daily Quiz #21
Reading: Chapter 12 (Factorial ANOVA)
April 12th: Factorial ANOVA cont.
Daily Quiz #22
April 17th: Repeated Measures Designs
Daily Quiz #23
Reading:
Chapter 13.1-13.7 (Repeated measures designs) (read 13.8 through the rest of the chapter
only if you want a challenge)
April 19th: Repeated Measures Designs cont.
Daily Quiz #24
April 24th: Analyzing Categorical Data
Daily Quiz #25
Reading:
Chapter 18 up until section 18.6 (skip 18.3.3, 18.3.4) (Categorical data)
Optional:
Handout from my website on Chi Square
SPSS Assignment #7 due today: Using any of the data sets on the companion website, compare three or
more means using an ANOVA. Make sure to check and discuss all of the assumptions of the ANOVA. In
addition, compute and report the appropriate effect size. Make sure that the ANOVA you run is one that is
statistically significant so that you can follow it up with a priori or post-hoc comparisons. In other words,
don’t just run an ANOVA that is not significant with no comparisons. Once again, strictly stick to APA style
and include the appropriate figures or tables, making sure that they are also in APA style and not just cut and
pasted from SPSS. Important! No two students may hand in the same exact variables, although you may
work together. 5 points
***Bring your ipad or laptop-Students complete class evaluations***