SOC201 Handouts Lectures 1-45

Lesson 01 Introduction to Statistics · Topic: 001-002 · Topic 001: Introduction to Statistics · Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes of social Statistics are given below:

•  Make students understand the importance of research and statistics in psychology.
•  Calculate the statistics necessary to solve problems.
•  To help students find out appropriate statistical analysis based on research questions, hypotheses, and type of data/variables.
•  Enable students to enter, encode and prepare data files, run analysis, and interpret output files

Chapters/Topics

•  Introduction to statistics and SPSS
•  Introduction to SPSS
•  Introduction to Inferential Statistics
•  Testing Hypothesis
•  Computing differences between Multiple Groups using t-test, F-test
•  Computing relationship between variables

Agenda

•  Defining Statistics
•  Why Statistics is Important?
•  What are some Myths About Statistics
•  Terms and Definitions: Descriptive and Inferential Statistics Sample and Population

Topic 002: Defining Statistics

The term statistics refers to a set of mathematical procedures for organizing, summarizing, and interpreting information (for example, your scores on the first assignment)

Statistics is the science of designing studies or experiments, collecting data, and analyzing data for the purpose of scientific discovery. Statistics is the science of Learning from Data.

Purposes of Statistics:

Specifically, statistics serve two general purposes:

1. Statistics are used to organize and summarize the information so that the researcher can see what happened in the research study and can communicate the results to others.
2. Statistics help the researcher to answer the questions that initiated the research by determining exactly what general conclusions are justified based on the specific results that were obtained.

Statistics deals with:

•  Collection of data,
•  Organizing and summarizing the data,
•  Analysis of data, and
•  Making inferences, or decisions and predictions.

Step 4 is the objective of statistics in sociology, i.e., making inferences about a population based on information contained in a representative sample taken from that population. Sociological Research only makes sense when you are able to understand statistics

Topic 003: Why Statistics is Important

The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential facts of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex world, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write”

H. G. Wells (1903) Mankind in the Making

Following are some of the main reasons why a sociology student needs to learn statistics.

•  No Research without Statistics
•  Increase Accuracy of Study
•  Universal Language

1. No Research without Statistics:

2. Increase Accuracy of Study:

Statistical procedures help to ensure that the information or observations are presented and interpreted in an accurate and informative way.

3. Universal Language

Statistics provide researchers with standardized techniques that are recognized and understood throughout the scientific community. Thus, the statistical methods used by one researcher are familiar to other researchers, who can accurately interpret the statistical analyses with a full understanding of how the analysis was done and what the results signify.