Department of Psychology · Value Added Course
Statistics in Social Sciences Using SPSS
A 2-credit Value Added Course (VAC) of 30 hours, designed to help students develop practical statistical skills. Fill in this form to register. Once you have registered you will be added to a WhatsApp group, where all further updates and course-related information will be shared.
- Credits
- 02
- Duration
- 30 hours
- Software
- SPSS
- Assessment
- As per University guidelines
What you will be able to do
By the end of the course you will be able to:
- Classify variables and measurement scales used in social-science research.
- Construct frequency tables and appropriate graphical representations.
- Calculate and interpret mean, median and mode.
- Calculate and interpret standard deviation.
- Examine relationships between variables using Pearson correlation.
- Use simple linear regression to make basic predictions, and interpret statistical software output.
Marks of 120 students. The bars are the frequency table, the line the frequency polygon. Mean 66.4, median 69.5, modal class 70–80.
Two groups with the same mean of 60. The standard deviation says how far from it the scores actually sit: about two thirds of each group lies within 53–67, against 44–76.
Exam score against hours of study, with the line of best fit. r = .79; the line predicts 5.7 marks for each extra hour.
The plots above are illustrations drawn from made-up numbers. They show the kind of output the course produces, not findings from any study.
Course outline
Six units, in the order they are taught.
Unit 1
Introduction to Statistics
- Role of statistics in the social sciences
- Population and sample
- Variables and data
- Types of data: qualitative and quantitative
- Scales of measurement: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio
Unit 2
Organization and Graphical Representation of Data
- Frequency distribution
- Ungrouped and grouped data
- Bar diagram, pie chart, histogram
- Frequency polygon and line graph
- Scatter plot
Unit 3
Measures of Central Tendency
- Mean, median and mode
- Merits and limitations of each measure
- Selecting an appropriate measure for social-science data
Unit 4
Measures of Dispersion
- Range and average deviation
- Variance and standard deviation
- Interpreting variability in social-science research
Unit 5
Correlation
- Covariance and the meaning of correlation
- Positive, negative and zero correlation
- Scatter diagrams
- Pearson’s product-moment and Spearman’s rank-order correlation
- Interpreting the correlation coefficient; correlation is not causation
Unit 6
Simple Linear Regression
- The concept of prediction
- Dependent and independent variables
- Line of best fit and the regression line
- Reading regression output tables in SPSS
- Using regression for prediction
Books for reference
- Gravetter, F. J. & Wallnau, L. B. (2012). Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, 9th ed. Wadsworth.
- Heiman, G. W. (1992). Basic Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences. Houghton Mifflin.
- Pagano, R. R. (2007). Understanding Statistics in the Behavioral Sciences. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
- Aron & Aron (2008). Statistics for Psychology, 5th ed. Pearson.
The printed syllabus carries a longer list of sixteen, reaching into methods this course does not cover. These are the introductory texts.
We look forward to welcoming you. See you there :)