91299 - Quantitative Methods For The Social Science

Learning outcomes

The aim of the course is to provide students with the necessary skills to carry out quantitative research in the social sciences. The empirical analyses are carried out using the statistical software Stata. Risultati di apprendimento Students who have completed this course should be able to: · define a research problem, formulate and empirically test research hypotheses; · choose a research question, collect data and evidence, draw conclusions, and communicate research results; · analyze quantitative data and interpret empirical results using Stata; · critically evaluate “scientific evidence” that is communicated in academic journals, the popular press, and other outlets such as reports from government agencies, and non-profit organizations.

Course contents

The course is organized in lectures and seminars, as detailed in the following program. Lectures (16 hours in remote on MS TEAMS) aim to introduce students to the core tenets of the discipline. Seminars (12 hours) aim to provide occasions for in-depth discussions of class materials and exercises. For the seminar section of the course, students will be divided in two groups according to their preferences and according to rules concerning the current pandemic emergency: one group will do the seminar in classroom (12 hours) and another group will do the seminar remotely on MS TEAMS (12 hours), for a total of 28 hours for each student. Students are required to carefully read the assigned material before the session and - in the case of seminars - active participation through presentations of existing scholarship and case studies will also be expected. Regardless of the health-related conditions and the specific organization of the course, students will be able to follow the lessons of the entire course remotely on MS TEAMS.

The course is dedicated to students who have never studied topics concerning key concepts underlying social research method and techniques, neither theoretically nor empirically.

The course aims to retrace the debate around social science method and offers knowledge about the most common data collection and analysis strategies in the field of socio-political empirical research. Lessons will address the following topics: logic of social research; standard and non-standard approaches to social research; operationalization and operational definitions; concepts and indicators; questionnaires; types of property and types of variable; displaying social research results; basic (descriptive) statistical analysis; monovariate and bivariate analysis.

 

Week 1 Introduction of the course

Paradigms of Social Research

Readings: Corbetta P., Social Research: Theory, Methods and Techniques, chapters: 1, 2, 10.

Weeks 2 and 3 Quantitative Techniques

From Theory to Empirical Research

Readings: Corbetta P., Social Research: Theory, Methods and Techniques, chapter: 3.

Week 4 The Survey and Scaling

Readings: Corbetta P., Social Research: Theory, Methods and Techniques, chapters: 5-6.

Lawrence Neumann W., Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, Edinburgh, Pearson New International Edition, only paragraph “Scale” in chapter 7, pp. 230-241.

Week 5: Seminar: Data Analysis

Frequency distribution and measures of central tendency.

Exercises with Stata.

Readings: Bohrnstedt G.W. and Knoke D., Statistics for Social Data Analysis, Peacock Publishers, 1982, chapters: 2, 3.

Week 6: Seminar: Bivariate Analysis

Crosstabulation: chi squared, eta squared, linear regression.

Exercises with Stata.

Readings: Bohrnstedt G.W. and Knoke D., Statistics for Social Data Analysis, Peacock Publishers, 1982, chapters: 4 (except par. 4.5.1 and 4.6), 7 (except 7.10 and 7.11), 8 (except 8.4.3-8.9).

Week 7: Seminar Create your own Questionnaire and Analyze Data: Discussion

Students will elaborate a questionnaire on a topic of interest applying the knowledge acquired during the previous theoretical lessons. Theoretical part developed in order to create the questionnaire, hypothesis, questionnaire and results will be discussed during the lesson.

This discussion is the first part of the exam for regularly attending students.

Administer the questionnaire to a sample of, at least, 50 cases and organize data in a data matrix.

Readings/Bibliography

Corbetta P., Social Research. Theory, Methods and Techniques, London, Sage, 2003 (chapters: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10).

Bohrnstedt G.W. and Knoke D., Statistics for Social Data Analysis, Peacock Publishers, 1982 (chapters: 2, 3, 4 (except par. 4.5.1 and 4.6), 7 (except 7.10 and 7.11), 8 (except 8.4.3-8.9).

Lawrence Neumann W., Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, Edinburgh, Pearson New International Edition, only paragraph “Scale” in chapter 7, pp. 230-241.

 

Teaching methods

Face-to-face lessons (16 hours) and seminars (12 hours).

Students are expected to read in advance the recommended readings for each session.

Assessment methods

Evaluation will vary according to whether students attend and participate (or not). Attendance and participation status only has implications for the exam mode.

Students may choose to regularly attend the course, and then decide to take the exam as non-attending students. On the contrary, students who intend to take the exam as regularly attending students are required to participate in lectures and seminars as specified below.

Regularly attending students

Students will be classified as “regularly attending students” if they attend at least 6 out of 8 lectures and participate in all seminars (i.e. reading, discussing and analysing data). Participation will be evaluated by checking student’s access on the Teams Platform during lectures. After the first two weeks of attendance, students will be asked if they are planning to be “regularly attending students”.

The exam is split into two parts.

The first part will be concluded at the end of the course. Students will have to produce a questionnaire on a topic of their interest (the topic has to be defined with the teacher at the end of lectures). The questionnaire has to be administered to at least 40 cases and data has to be organized in a data matrix and analysed with STATA. Students will analyze data applying theoretical and methodological knowledge acquired during the course. Students will draw a report up. This report will include: a description of the topic investigated through the questionnaire; data analysis (mono and bivariate analysis); computation of some indexes. All materials (report, questionnaire, data matrix, data analyses) have to be sent via email to the teacher – d.mantovani@unibo.it [mailto:d.mantovani@unibo.it] – within December 18, 2020.

The grade achieved in this part of the exam will count as 70% of the entire exam. The grade will be valid until the end of the current academic year (September 2021).

The second part of the exam will consist in 16 closed-ended questions based on the theoretical part of the course (and counts as the remaining 30% of the overall exam). The student will have to take this second part within the final exam session scheduled for September 2021. To take the second part of the exam, the student has to sign up on Almaesami. If a regularly attending student does not take the second part of the exam within the abovementioned deadline, his/her grade achieved in the first part will be automatically cancelled, and will have to take the exam as a non-attending student.

Non-attending students

The exam is administered in an exclusively written form and consists in both closed-ended and open questions. The exam will last 1 hour approximately.

For all students

Cheating and copying test's questions are forbidden. Any behaviour perceived as suspicious by the professor will lead to annulment of the exam. Students responsible for misbehaviour will take the exam in an oral form.

The only valid mark is the one achieved in the most recent attempt to pass the exam.

Candidates who pass the exam can refuse the final mark (thus requesting to re-take the exam) only once, in accordance with the university’s teaching regulations.

After having rejected a passing mark, any other subsequent passing mark will be recorded in the candidates’ transcripts.

Each student is personally responsible for his/her registration in the exam session on AlmaEsami. Registration closes 5 days before the exam. It is not possible to sign up for the exam after registration has terminated. Students who change their minds must withdraw their registration no later than the 5 days before the exam. Withdrawal from the exam permits the student to participate in the following exam session. Nonetheless, in case of withdrawal during the last 5 days before the exam, the student must send (using his/her official account @studio.unibo.it) an e-mail to d.mantovani@unibo.it [mailto:d.mantovani@unibo.it]

Office hours

See the website of Debora Mantovani