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Data Analysis for Psychologists

Course leader: Eddie Shoesmith
eddie.shoesmith@buckingham.ac.uk
One term (15 units)

Course overview

This course aims to help students gain an appreciation of the importance of quantitative concepts and methods in psychology research, by providing practical experience of a number of simple descriptive and inferential statistical methods. The course introduces students to data entry and analysis using the current version of the SPSS software package, and helps them develop skills in interpreting and reporting the results from statistical analyses.

The following topic areas are covered:

• Introduction to SPSS
• Descriptive statistics
• Statistical inference and the logic of statistical hypothesis testing
• Parametric and non-parametric analysis of 2-sample problems (independent and paired designs)
• Parametric and non-parametric correlation
• Simple linear regression analysis
• Analysis of simple contingency tables

Assessment

The course is assessed by two multiple-choice tests (20%), one report based on analysis of class data (20%), and an SPSS-based examination (60%).

Key texts

• Howitt, D. & D. Cramer, Introduction to statistics in psychology (4th ed., Harlow: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008). ISBN: 978-0-13-205161-3.
• Howitt, D. & D. Cramer, Introduction to SPSS in psychology (4th ed., Harlow: Pearson Education, 2008). ISBN: 978-0-13-205164-4.