Sociological Methodology I: Introduction

Enrollment limited to first-year Sociology doctoral students. Other students by instructor permission only. This course provides a conceptual and applied introduction to quantitative social sciences methodology, including epistemology, measurement, sampling, descriptive statistics, statistical inference, and ordinary least squares regression. Students will be introduced to both the methodological logic and techniques of statistical data analysis, including application in the software Stata. The course will situate quantitative methodology within the broader frame of sociological research. It will present the purpose, goals, and assumptions behind techniques of statistical analysis and will discuss applications to analyzing data and interpreting results. In addition to the lecture time, SOC 381 includes a weekly section for further practice with statistical software and application.