Quantitative methods I: data production

Teacher(s)

Gurnet Nathan (compensates Marquis Nicolas); Marquis Nicolas;

Language

French

Prerequisites

The prerequisite(s) for this Teaching Unit (Unité d’enseignement – UE) for the programmes/courses that offer this Teaching Unit are specified at the end of this sheet.

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :

- Mastery the basis of the quantitative data’s epistemology - Ability to produce a questionnaire - Mastery of basic logical operations - Mastery of the vocabulary, basic operations and handling of a database - Ability to realize several basic transformations of variables - Initiation to statistics and secondary data analysis - Being able to read and assess an social science paper using quantitative analysis

Content

1 Introduction : « healthy suspicion in statistics »
2 Epistemology 1 : what is quantitative research ?
3 Epistemology 2 : what is quantitative data ?
4 Producing a research questionnaire
6 Interviewing respondents with a questionnaire
7 Basics in database handling
8 Working on variables
9 Descriptive statistics and assessment of the sample
10 Working on second hand data : existing databases
11 Assessing a paper making use of quantitatve analysis
12 Focus : quantitative survey through internet
13 Q-A

Teaching methods

The course will be taught ex-cathedra 2h/week and will provide the theoretical elements needed to meet the learning outcomes. We will make use of concrete situation, and clarify which good practices to develop in quantitative surveys. (An important precision follows at the end of this document).
The practical exercises (TP) will require commitment from the students, as they are set to allow them to put in practice the theoretical elements presented during the course, in particular : creating and making use of a questionnaire from a research question, interviewing respondents, creation of a database and transforming variables. Exchanges between students as well as with teaching assistant and the teacher will be fostered. These sessions are also intended to help students realize the expected deliverable (cf. below).

Evaluation methods

Students will be assessed 1) through a deliverable that will be a group assignment – instructions will be given during the first lesson and made available on Moodle (50%), 2) through an 2-hours-examination at the end of the term (50%).

The global mark is the geometric average of the two parts:
Scare root of [(PointsExamen/20)*(PointsTravail/20)]

Other information

At the university level, it is up to the students to decide wether they attend to the lessons or not. Teacher and assistants of course recommend a maximal attendance at both lessons and TPs. Except in the event of force majeure, non-attendance and its potential consequence are the student’s sole responsibility.
In the same way, students are free to organize their time during the academic year. Once again, we recommend a continuous assessment of the course comprehension AS WELL AS a continuous commitment in the deliverable.
Students who decide no to follow those instructions and who would unfortunately fail at the January examination round should be aware that no catching-up session will be organized in the second term, nor in ex-cathedra teaching, nor in informal meetings with teaching assistants. The course content, about which the students were allowed to ask questions during the first term will be considered as seen and understood.
Students who failed in January will of course be given the opportunity to get explanation about their deliverable and examination, but it is their sole responsibility to bring the needed improvement at June or August sessions.

Bibliography

Sera communiquée au fil du cours.
Les slides et d’autres éléments seront disponibles via Moodle.

Faculty or entity

ESPB