Social Science Statistics

Full course description

This course aims to provide a solid understanding of how statistical methods can be used to address social scientific research questions. The course will train students both as consumers and producers of quantitative social science research. As consumers, students will need to have the competence to read and understand quantitatively oriented scholarly research. Thus, as a key requirement it is necessary to know what assumptions are made with different statistical techniques, how the analysis was conducted and how to critically evaluate the output that is being reported in scholarly research. Furthermore, the course will train students from different disciplinary backgrounds to become producers of quantitative social science research. Here emphasis is placed on understanding the match between the research question, the data used for the empirical analysis, the data structure and how to choose the best statistical technique to answer research questions that are relevant within European studies. Furthermore, the course will teach students how to interpret and to effectively report the research results. Thus, both for consumers and producers of social science research, the course will provide an introduction to the fundamentals of statistical analysis.