1 / 11

Sociology 601: Class 1, September 1 2009

Sociology 601: Class 1, September 1 2009. Syllabus Course website Objectives Prerequisites Text Homeworks Class time Exams Grading Schedule. Sociology 601: Class 1, September 1 2009. Basic Terms Statistical inference (Chapter 1.1 to 1.2) Variables and scales (Chapter 2.1)

deloisb
Download Presentation

Sociology 601: Class 1, September 1 2009

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Sociology 601: Class 1, September 1 2009 Syllabus • Course website • Objectives • Prerequisites • Text • Homeworks • Class time • Exams • Grading • Schedule

  2. Sociology 601: Class 1, September 1 2009 Basic Terms • Statistical inference (Chapter 1.1 to 1.2) • Variables and scales (Chapter 2.1) • Randomization (2.2) • Sampling and non-sampling variability (2.3) • Sampling techniques (2.4)

  3. Chapter 1.1 – 1.2 definitions (pages 3-5) • Descriptive Statistics:summary descriptions of a collection of data • Statistical Inferences: predictions or generalizations made from data • Sample: subset of the population on which the study collects data • Population: total set of subjects of interest in a study • Statistic: a numerical summary of sample data • Parameter: a numerical summary of a population

  4. Choosing a Population: an example • The student government at the University of Maryland conducts a study about alcohol abuse among students. One hundred of the 33,000 members of the student body are sampled and asked to complete a questionnaire. One question is “On how many days in the past week did you consume at least one alcoholic drink?” • Q: What is the population of interest?

  5. Populations • People in the United States • Countries, cities, census tracts • Years • Newspaper stories or TV shows • Organizations, social movements • Mixed: people over time

  6. Chapter 2.1 definitions (pages 12-17) • variable: a characteristic that can vary among subjects in a population • race, age, sex, educational attainment • Q: is a characteristic a variable if it is fixed for an individual? (e.g. race) • constant: a characteristic that cannot vary among subjects in a population • One constant is the quality of being a member of the population (duh! - yet statistically important)

  7. Chapter 2.1, Scales (pages 12-17) • Nominal scale: unordered, discrete categories, • (religious affiliation, vote) • Ordinal scale: naturally ordered, discrete categories • (social class -- upper, middle, lower) • Interval scale: variables whose values have a specific distance from one another. • (income is a continuous variable with an interval scale) • (number of times married is a discrete variable with an interval scale)

  8. Dichotomous Variables • Any variable with only two categories • Examples: gender • Examples: Catholic • Examples: Middle class • Examples: Family income > $100K Q: Nominal, Ordinal, or Interval?

  9. Chapter 2.1, useless definitions (pages 12-17) • Qualitative variables: = nominal scale of measurement. • Quantitative variables: = interval scale of measurement. • Categorical variables: includes all variables with nominal or ordinal scales

  10. Practice with variable scales

  11. Practice with variable scales

More Related