Entry requirements
Only open to master’s students in Psychology, with the exception of students of the specialisation of Methodology and Statistics because of overlap with other courses
Description
The following subjects are covered by the course:
Univariate analysis: description of frequency distributions and measures of central tendency and variation;
Bivariate analysis: estimating and testing relationships between two variables;
Dimension reduction and scale construction: finding underlying dimensions for a set of items, and estimating reliability and validity for psychological scales;
Regression and analysis-of-variance: predicting one variable by a set of other variables;
Most of the techniques will have been covered in Bachelor courses. What’s new is that in the set of course assignments students are consistently placed in the role of psychological researchers, and are asked to practice doing the following:
Choosing the most appropriate statistical technique given the nature of the research question and the data;
Applying the techniques with SPSS on real, “dirty” data, which implies a strong emphasis on trouble shooting: most notably, the student should be able to check and provide remedies for assumption violations and outliers;
Reporting the results in an appropriate way (both technically and psychologically), in accordance (at least globally) with APA-standards for text, tables, and figures.
Course objectives
The general objective of the course is to give students the knowledge of and practical skills in the most commonly used data analysis techniques that they might need for their masters thesis in psychology. The more specific goals are the following:
Learning to understand the general principles, possibilities and complications, especially in regard to the assumptions of the techniques discussed in the course.
Learning to choose the right technique for a research question and to perform the appropriate data analyses with SPSS.
Learning to report the results of these data analyses following the APA rules for scientific writing in psychology.
Timetable
For the timetables of your lectures, work groups and exams, please select your study programme in:
Psychology timetables
Lectures
Work group sessions
Exams
Registration
Course
Students need to enroll for lectures and work group sessions.
Master’s course registration
Examination
Students are not automatically enrolled for an examination. They can register via uSis from 100 to 10 calendar days before the date. Students who are not registered will not be permitted to take the examination.
Registering for exams
Mode of instruction
8 lectures in which techniques are explained and illustrated in the applied way described above. 5 work group sessions in which the course assignments are discussed. Attendance of work group sessions is mandatory.
Assessment method
The final grade is based on: A written exam, consisting of multiple choice and essay questions (60%) and the average grade of the five home assignments (40%).
The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences has instituted that instructors use a software programme for the systematic detection of plagiarism in students’ written work. In case of fraud disciplinary actions will be taken. Please see the information concerning fraud.
Reading list
Field, A. (2013). Discovering statistics using SPSS. Fourth Edition. London: Sage. ISBN (paperback): 9781446249185.
Lecture notes.
Contact information
Dr. Peter de Heus
deheus1@fsw.leidenuniv.nl