HD 514

Research Methods II

Description:

This course provides an overview of the basic data analytic procedures used in human development research. Through lectures and multiple homework assignments, students will learn to compute and interpret the basic descriptive and inferential statistics employed in experimental and correlational designs. Lectures and assignments will be geared toward developing the necessary statistical expertise to design, evaluate, and improve intervention/prevention programs for youth and families.

Objectives:

Students will learn to compute and interpret:

• Graphical presentation of data (e.g., histograms)
• Measures of central tendency (mode, median, mean)
• Measures of spread (variance, standard deviation)
• Other distributional statistics (e.g., skewness, kurtosis)
• Data transformations (e.g., standard scores, scale construction)
• Coefficient alpha
• t-tests
• Analysis of variance
• Post hoc and planned comparisons
• Multivariate analysis of variance (including repeated measures)
• Chi square analysis
• Correlations
• Partial correlations
• Linear regression
• Multiple correlation and regression
• Path analyses

• Types of data (e.g., nominal, ordinal)
• Hypothesis testing
• One and two-tailed tests
• Power
• Effect size
• Sampling
• Generalizability
• Main effects and interactions
• Mediators and moderators