Psychology 612Advanced Statistical and Research Methods for Psychology IISPRING 2008Instructor: Patrick E. McKnight, Ph.D.Office: David King 2064/2065Office Hours: Wed 11:10am-1:10pm and by appointmentPhone: (703) 993-8292E-mail: [email protected] Location: Fine Arts Building B108Class Date/Time: Wednesday 8:30am-11:10amClass website: http://mres.gmu.edu/PSYC612/Teaching AssistantsTA Secs Office HoursDavid Kidd 201 M [email protected] 202Richard Hermida 203 M [email protected] 204Joseph Luchman 205 M [email protected] 206Please refer to the lab syllabus for specific instructionson the locations and time for your assigned lab.Course Pre-requisitesStudents are required to earn a “B” or better in PSYC 611(or equivalent) to enroll in PSYC 612. Additionally, stu-dents ought to understand the following concepts and terms:measures of central tendency (e.g., mean, median, mode),measures of dispersion (e.g., variance, standard deviation,range), tests of difference (e.g., t-tests, ANOVA), measuresof association (e.g., correlation, covariance), tests of asso-ciation (e.g., multiple regression, chi-square), and researchdesign. Students who recognize that they are not preparedto take the course will be strongly encouraged to take amore introductory course.Required Textbooks2 Campbell, D.T. and Stanley, J.C. (1963/2005) Exper-imental and quasi-experimental designs for research.Houghton-Mifflin: Boston, MA. (ISBN: 0-395-30787-2)2 Carmines, E.G. and Zeller, R.A. (1979). Reliability andValidity Assessment. (Sage University Paper Series onQuantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, No. 07-017). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. (ISBN: 9780803913714)2 Dunteman, G.H. and Lewis-Beck, M.S. (1989). Princi-pal component analysis. (Sage University Paper Series onQuantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, No. 07-069). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. (ISBN: 9780803931046)2 Fox, J. (1991). Regression diagnostics. (Sage UniversityPaper Series on Quantitative Applications in the SocialSciences, No. 07-079). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. (ISBN:00-8039-3971-X)2 Kim, J. and Mueller, C.W. (1978). Introduction to factoranalysis: What it is and how to do it. (Sage UniversityPaper Series on Quantitative Applications in the SocialSciences, No. 07-013). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. (ISBN:0-8039-1165-3)2 Lewis-Beck, M.S. (1976). Applied Regression: An Intro-duction. (Sage University Paper Series on QuantitativeApplications in the Social Sciences, No. 07-022). New-bury Park, CA: Sage. (ISBN: 0-8039-1494-6)Optional TextbooksStudents who struggle with general writing or basic un-derstanding of statistical terminology may benefit fromZinsser’s book “On writing well” and Gonick and Smith’shumorous “The cartoon guide to statistics”, respectively. Irecommend both books for all students since we all strugglewith writing and basic concepts. These books present bothtopics in very easily digestible formats.2 Zinsser, W. (2006). On writing well, 30th AnniversaryEdition: The classic guide to writing nonfiction. Colllins:New York.2 Gonick, L and Smith, W. (1994). The cartoon guide tostatistics. HarperCollins: New York.Students who are interested in more than just the gen-eral “nuts and bolts” of the standard statistical proceduresought to consult the following books. Many of the points Imake in class come from these books but it is always bestto read them from the (quasi) original source.2 Abelson, R.P. (1995). Statistics as principled argument.Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ. (ISBN: 0-8058-0528-1).2 van Belle, G. (2002). Statistical rules of thumb. Wiley-Interscience: New York. (ISBN: 0-4714-0227-3)Additional ReadingAt times I will post additional readings that are optional(and free) for all students. Many of these readings provideexcellent examples of the topics we discuss in class. Pleasesee the course website for links to the electronic versions ofthese readings.1Course OverviewPsychology 612 is the second course of a two-course se-quence that serves to introduce psychology graduate stu-dents to statistics, research methodology, research design,and measurement. Traditional graduate psychology statis-tics courses emphasize statistical techniques as a matter ofdeclarative knowledge. Students are expected to know eachprocedure and its “appropriate” application. An alterna-tive approach tends toward technical discourse (e.g., matrixalgebra, formula memorization, and hand calculations) andrequires greater attention to minute detail and mathemat-ical vernacular. A less used but equally suitable approachtreats statistics as a method of principled argument. Themethod I use for this course is a hybrid of the three ap-proaches. You will be expected to know the statistical ter-minology, apply your knowledge in a both carrying out theprocedures as well as interpreting the results, and then youwill be expected to use the results in a manner consistentwith scientific discourse.Course ObjectivesThe purpose of this course is to further your introductionto data analysis, research design, and measurement. Yourcourse work to date ought to have prepared you well by cov-ering measures of central tendency, measures of dispersion,measures of association, and measures of difference. Due totime constraints, I do not intend to review these terms ortheir purposes so I urge every student to review that ma-terial prior to this course. What I do intend to cover is acomprehensive view of univariate, bivariate and multivari-ate statistics - why we use statistics, why you should learnthese tools, and what are the most important features tolearn and understand. You will gain practical skills in inter-preting, applying and explaining statistical procedures. Thecombination of an interactive lecture and a weekly labora-tory will offer each student the opportunity to see the pro-cedures, conduct the procedures yourselves, and then teachone another what you learned. This approach is the commonmedical model of education - see one, do one, and teach one- that results in better retention and deeper understanding.Grading CriteriaGrades will be determined by each student’s observed per-formance on five statistics modules - four required and oneoptional. Each student must perform the statistical proce-dures in the presence of a TA or the instructor and demon-strate proficiency. There will be no time limit on the per-formance but speed and fluency of your performance willbe indicative of your proficiency. Students may complete amodule