Postgraduate Course: Psychological Research Methods: Data Management and Analysis (CLPS11056)
Course Outline
| School | School of Health in Social Science |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This option is a core course for the MSc in Psychology of Mental Health (Conversion). It focuses on data handling and data analysis. Students will engage in laboratory style workshops where they will participate in practical activities to enhance their data analysis skills. The course will be assessed through a class task designed to reveal statistical skills and understanding of the appropriateness of statistical techniques for different types of data. |
| Course description |
This course will be structured around ten workshops comprised of lectures and practical sessions, online activities and supportive materials. It will familiarise students with both quantitative and qualitative analysis, mainly focusing on handling and analysis of quantitative data using SPSS. Both parametric and non-parametric statistics will be covered. The practical sessions will take place in computer labs so that students can access SPSS in-class. The lectures and practical sessions of each workshop will be structured in the following way across the ten weeks.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2015/16, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Full Year |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 25,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
171 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
There will be three assessments for this course.
First, a formative assessment will take place in the last session of the first semester. This will require the students to enter data into SPSS and complete simple analyses under exam conditions. The paper will be marked and discussed in class.
There will be two summative assessments for the course:
i) A 3000 word small report using qualitative analysis (30%).
ii) A set paper which is completed as coursework and which requires the student to conduct simple and more complex analyses using SPSS and provide short answers to a series of questions (70%).
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| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the different levels of measurement (including the difference between parametric and non-parametric data), difference between one and two tailed hypotheses and measures of central tendency.
- Enter data into SPSS, screen data for errors and perform visual and statistical inspection of distributions and transform data.
- Know which statistical tests are most commonly used for answering questions about between and within group differences and relationships between variables, for different levels of measurement.
- Conduct statistical analyses to answer questions about differences and relationships between variables, including testing of assumptions, interpretation of the output and post-hoc analyses (using SPSS).
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Reading List
Clark-Carter, D. (2010). Quantitative Psychological Research (3rd edition). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press.
Field, A. (2013). Discovering Statistics using IBM SPSS Statistics (4th edition). London: Sage.
Haslam, S.A. & McGarty, C. (2014). Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology (2nd Edition). London: Sage.
Tabachnick, B.G. & Fidell, L.S. (2013). Using Multivariate Statistics (6th edition). Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Develop your research knowledge that will enable you to discuss, share, present and analyse data and information in various formats and from a range of sources
Develop your research methods and data analysis skills
Develop your critical reflection and writing skills |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Emily Newman
Tel: (0131 6)51 3945
Email: emily.newman@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Nicholas Watson
Tel: (0131 6)50 4277
Email: nick.watson@ed.ac.uk |
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