The Illinoisschool of Professional Psychology

The IllinoisSchool of Professional Psychology

at ArgosyUniversity, Chicago

COURSE SYLLABUS

PP7202

Statistics

Fall 2012

Faculty Information

Faculty NameSteve Miller

Campus: Chicago

Contact Information:

Office Room 1364

Office Phone Number(312) 777-7658.

E-mail:

Office Hours: Tuesday 12:00 – 12:30, 3:30 – 5:30; Thursday12:00 – 12:30; Friday 9:00 – 12:00; Friday 9:00 – 12:00; and by appointment

Short Faculty Bio:

Prior to coming to Argosy, I taught at CaliforniaStateUniversity, Fullerton, where my appointment was in the area of quantitative psychology. Prior to my time in California, I was a graduate student in social psychology at Loyola University Chicago, where I completed a Ph.D. I also completed masters’ degrees in clinical psychology (IllinoisState) and statistics (Loyola). My research has focused on the relationship between personality and emotion, as well as on statistical techniques for psychological research.

Course Catalogue Description:

Statistical methods, parametric and nonparametric, with an emphasis on those applicable to clinical evaluation and research, are addressed in this course.

Course Pre-requisites: None

Required Textbook:

Howell (2009). Statistical methods for psychology (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thompson/Wadsworth. [ISBN: 0495597848]

Technology: Pentium III CPU/ Windows 98; 128MB RAM printer; Microsoft Office: Acrobat (full version); Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 (PC), 5.0 (MAC), or Netscape Navigator 4.08; Norton Antivirus.

Course length: 15Weeks

Contact Hours: 45 Hours

Credit Value: 3.0

Course Objectives:

Course Objective / Program Goal / Method of Assessment
To develop an appreciative, and at the same time critical, attitude towards quantitative methods in clinical/behavioral research / Goal 4 – Foundations
Goal 5 - Scholarship / Assignments
To demonstrate an ability to perform and interpret basic univariate statistical procedures using SPSS / Goal 5 - Scholarship / Assignments
Tests
To demonstrate an ability to present statistical results in APA style. / Goal 5 - Scholarship / Assignments
To develop an ability to recognize and avoid common statistical pitfalls / Goal 5 - Scholarship / Assignments
Tests
To develop an awareness of the ways in which statistical procedures can be utilized in clinical practice settings. / Goal 5 – Scholarship / Assignments

Instructional Contact Hours/Credit

Students can expect 15 hours of instructional engagement for every 1 semester credit hour of a course. Instructional engagement activities include lectures, presentations, discussions, group-work, and other activities that would normally occur during class time. Instructional engagement activities may occur in a face-to-face meeting, or in the classroom. You are expected to do something outside of class (i.e., meet with the T.A. or the instructor), but are not expect to go to the T.A. session each week or to meet with the instructor each week (though you are welcome to do either/both).

In addition to instructional engagement, students can expect to complete 30 hours of outside work for every 1 semester credit hour of a course. Outside work includes preparing for and completing readings and assignments. Such outside work includes, but is not limited to, all research associated with completing assignments, work with others to complete a group project, participation in tutorials, labs, simulations and other electronic activities that are not a part of the instructional engagement, as well as any activities related to preparation for instructional engagement.

At least an equivalent amount of work as required in paragraph above shall be applied for other academic activities as established by the institution, including laboratory work, internships, practica, studio work, and other academic work leading to the award of credit hours.

Purpose:

This course is designed to be an intensive investigation into statistical analyses commonly used in Psychology and other social-behavioral sciences. Topics include Factorial ANOVA, Repeated Measures, Multiple Regression, Trend Analysis, Non-Parametric procedures, and the General Linear Model (GLM).

In addition, the student will be exposed to various analytic philosophies. The course will be computer intensive (using SPSS). Students are expected to be familiar with basic statistical issues, though they will be reviewed at the beginning of the class.

The main goals of this course are to: (a) expose the student to advanced statistical techniques, (b) make the student proficient in the techniques, (c) give the student the expertise to “think” about appropriate statistical techniques for the problems they will face in and out of academic settings, and (d) give the student exposure to different analytic strategies and philosophies. This course is associated with select student-learning objectives (linked to Program Goals), including writing skills, critical analysis of research, research skills, applying knowledge to real world problems/applications, and working with others.

This course is analysis and writing intensive. Students usually spend approximately 5-10 hours per week on homework assignments beyond class time.

Assignments:

Homework:

We learn to use statistics by doing. Hence, homework is required. Assignments will be made about every week. The early assignments will be done BY HAND and a calculator (you can double-check with a spreadsheet program). Later assignments will generally be done using SPSS. You will be required to write up your findings as part of the homework. Homework should be typed and relevant output and syntax (where applicable) should be attached, though not all output need be. Homework will be graded on a 1-10 format, with 10 being high, and 1 being low. All assignments count equally. The one lowest score will be dropped. NO LATE HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS ARE ACCEPTED.

Exams:

There will be a midterm and final. Exams will have two portions. There will be a take-home computational portion where students are free to use any non-living resources. There will be a close-book, close-notes conceptual portion in class. Exams are very applied in nature to allow the student to demonstrate skills learned in the course.

Suggested Websites:

When I was a graduate student first teaching statistics, I created the following web site which I can no longer update (some links may be down):

Numerous statistical resources may be accessed from the web site.

SPSS/PASW Note: During the week of April 20, 2009, the SPSS corporation decided to change the name of their software to PASW, though the corporation is still named SPSS. Any complete version of SPSS/PASW may be used for this course. The current version is 21.0(released the first week of August, 2012), regardless of the name. When writing this syllabus, our campus had version 20.0. If you have an earlier version than SPSS 16, I have no issue with this, but you may have difficulty exchanging files with your friends. There is an SPSS/PASW Graduate Pack (NOT the student version) that you can purchase, OR you can use the facilities on campus. The student version does not have all the features necessary for this class, but the Graduate Pack and campus versions do. It is also possible to download a 14-day free trial of SPSS from their web site.

Assignment Table:

Week / Topic / Readings / Assignment
1
Tuesday,
9/11 / Overview,
Review / Wilkinson et al. (1999)
Howell, Chapter 1 – “Basic Concepts”
Howell, Chapter 2 – “Describing and Exploring Data” / Assignment #1 Handed Out
2
Tuesday,
9/18 / Review / Howell, Ch. 3 – “The Normal Distribution
Howell, Ch. 4 – “Sampling Distributions and Hypothesis Testing”
Howell, Ch. 8 – “Power” / Info Sheet Due, Assignment #1 Due,
Assignment #2 handed out
3
Tuesday,
9/25 / t-tests / Howell, Ch. 7 – “Hypothesis Tests Applied to Means” / Assignment #2 due, Assignment #3 handed out
4
Tuesday,
10/2 / Simple Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) / Howell, Ch. 11 – “Simple Analysis of Variance” / Assignment #3 due, Assignment #4 handed out
5
Tuesday,
10/9 / Multiple Comparison Procedures (MCP) / Howell, Ch. 12 – “ Multiple ComparisonsAmong Treatment Means”
NO FRIDAY OFFICE HOURS THIS WEEK / Assignment #4 due, Assignment #5 handed out
6
Tuesday,
10/16 / Factorial ANOVA / Howell, Ch. 13 – “Factorial Analysis of Variance” / Assignment #5 due, Assignment #6 handed out
7
Tuesday,
10/23 / Repeated Measures ANOVA,
Mixed ANOVAs / Howell, Ch. 14 – “Repeated Measures Designs” / Assignment #6 due
8
Tuesday,
10/30 / Midterm Exam / N/A / N/A
9
Tuesday,
11/6 / Correlation & Regression,
Go over exams / Howell, Ch. 9 – “Correlation and Regression”
Licht (2004) / Assignment #7 handed out
NOTE: No office hours on Friday.3/9
10
Tuesday,
11/13 / Alternative Correlational Techniques / Howell, Ch. 10 – “Alternative Correlational Techniques” / Assignment #7 due, Assignment #8 handed out
11
Tuesday,
11/20 / Multiple Regression (MR) / Howell, Ch. 15 – “Multiple Regression”
Baron & Kenny, 1986
Holmbeck, 2002 / Assignment #8 due, Assignment #9 handed out
12
Tuesday,
11/27 / Thanksgiving
NO CLASS / Thanksgiving
NO CLASS / Eat
13
Tuesday,
12/4 / General Linear Model (GLM) / Howell, Ch. 16 – “Analysis of Variance and Covariance as General Linear Models”
Cohen, 1968 / Assignment #9 due, Assignment #10 handed out
14
Tuesday,
12/11 / Non-Parametric Techniques / Howell, Ch. 17 – “Log-linear Analysis”
Howell, Ch.18 – “Resampling and Nonparametric Approaches to Data” / Assignment #10 due, key to #10 handed out. Final Exam Handed Out
15
Thursday,
12/18 / Final Exam / -- / Final Exam Due

The above schedule and procedures in this course are subject to change in the event of unforeseen circumstances, or if we decide to spend additional time on a few of the topics (e.g., we may want to spend more time on multiple regression, etc.).

Recommended Textbook:

Fields, A. (2009). Discovering Statistics using SPSS. (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Ltd. [ISBN: 1847879071]

Other Readings:

Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(6), 1173-1182.

Cohen, J. (1968). Multiple regression as a general data-analytic system. PsychologicalBulletin, 70, 426-443.

Holmbeck, G. N. (2002). Post-hoc probing of moderational and mediational effects in studies of pediatric populations. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 27(1), 87-96.

Licht, M. H. (2004). Multiple regression and correlation. In L. G. Grimm & P. R.Yarnold (eds). Reading and understanding multivariate statistics. (pp. 19-64). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Wilkinson, L., & Task Force on Statistical Inference. (1999). Statistical methods inpsychology journals: Guidelines and explanations. TheAmerican Psychologist, 54(8), 594-604.

Grading Criteria

Grading ScaleGrading requirements

A / 100 – 93
A- / 92 – 90
B+ / 89 – 88
B / 87 – 83
B- / 82 – 80
C+ / 79 – 78
C / 77 - 73
C- / 72 – 70
F / 69 and below
Homework Assignments / 40%
Midterm Exam – Take Home / 12.5%
Midterm Exam – In Class / 12.5%
Final Exam – Take Home / 17.5%
Final Exam – In Class / 17.5%
Total / 100%

Library Resources

Argosy University’s core collection, accessible in the campus common online library, features more than 30,000 full-text journals, 70,000 electronic books, over a million full-text dissertations, thousands of online streaming videos and other content covering all academic subject areas including Business & Economics, Education, Humanities, Medicine & Allied Health, Social & Behavior Sciences, and more. In addition to online resources, Argosy University’s onsite collections contain a wealth of subject-specific research materials searchable in the Library Online Catalog. Although additional logins are not needed to access the online library, a few select resources require a user name and password, including Argosy University online CRP’s & dissertations, the PEP database, OCLC, or Google Scholar “Library Links.” Please call 312-777-7653, or e-mail if you need access to these resources.

If you are not familiar with using the library, there are a number of workshops provided by the library throughout the semester, or visit the library's website at: Students are encouraged to ask a librarian for assistance. The librarian can also help identify and locate needed information resources for papers and projects, provide assistance with retrieving and evaluating information, database searching, and in-depth research consultations.

Information Literacy: Argosy University’s Information Literacy Tutorial was developed to teach fundamental and transferable research skills, including selecting sources appropriate for academic-level research, searching periodical indexes and search engines, and evaluating and citing information. Please view the tutorial at:

Academic Policies

Academic Dishonesty/Plagiarism: In an effort to foster a spirit of honesty and integrity during the learning process, ArgosyUniversity requires that the submission of all course assignments represent the original work produced by that student. All sources must be documented through normal scholarly references/citations and all work must be submitted using the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th Edition (2001). WashingtonDC: American Psychological Association (APA) format. Please refer to Appendix A in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th Edition for thesis and paper format. Students are encouraged to purchase this manual (required in some courses) and become familiar with its content as well as consult the ArgosyUniversity catalog for further information regarding academic dishonesty and plagiarism.

Scholarly writing: The faculty at ArgosyUniversity is dedicated to providing a learning environment that supports scholarly and ethical writing, free from academic dishonesty and plagiarism. This includes the proper and appropriate referencing of all sources. You may be asked to submit your course assignments through “Turnitin,” ( an online resource established to help educators develop writing/research skills and detect potential cases of academic dishonesty. Turnitin compares submitted papers to billions of pages of content and provides a comparison report to your instructor. This comparison detects papers that share common information and duplicative language.

Americans with Disabilities Act Policy

It is the policy of ArgosyUniversity to make reasonable accommodations for qualified students with disabilities, in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If a student with disabilities needs accommodations, the student must notify the Director of Student Services. Procedures for documenting student disability and the development of reasonable accommodations will be provided to the student upon request.

Students will be notified by the Director of Student Services when each request for accommodation is approved or denied in writing via a designated form. To receive accommodation in class, it is the student’s responsibility to present the form (at his or her discretion) to the instructor. In an effort to protect student privacy, the Department of Student Services will not discuss the accommodation needs of any student with instructors. Faculty may not make accommodations for individuals who have not been approved in this manner.

The ArgosyUniversity Statement Regarding Diversity

ArgosyUniversity prepares students to serve populations with diverse social, ethnic, economic, and educational experiences. Both the academic and training curricula are designed to provide an environment in which students can develop the skills and attitudes essential to working with people from a wide range of backgrounds.

Assignment #1 (subject to change – don’t start before Day 1) - Please Type Your Answers

1. Define each of the following terms and give an example of each (do not give formulas):

a. Mean

b. Median

c. Mode

d. Standard Deviation

e. Sample

f. Population

g. Nominal Scale Measurement

h. Ordinal Scale Measurement

i. Interval Scale Measurement

j. Ratio Scale Measurement

2. Using the data on Page 38 of Howell’s text, compute by hand the variance andstandard deviation of Set 4 and Set 32 presented in Table 2.6.

3. Complete problem 2.19 on Page 58 of Howell’s text by hand.

4. Complete problem 2.54 on Page 62 of Howell’s text. You may do this problem by

using SPSS. You may work with others in class on this problem, but you must provide your own write-up and turn in your own work. Data for Howell may be downloaded from the following URL (PLEASE e-mail if you have trouble):

5. Using SPSS, provide the boxplot and exploratory data analysis for this data forProblem 2.57. Make statements about your data.

6. Watch the video available at either of the following URLs:

OR

Student Information Sheet for PP 7202 - Statistics

FALL 2012

Name: ______

Year in School: ______

Undergraduate Institution:______

Graduate Institutions and Degrees (if applicable):______

Phone number where you may be reached: ______

E-Mail address: ______

Time and Date of Statistics 7202:______

What experience do you have with statistics?

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Please list the mathematics/statistics courses you have taken:

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What do you hope to gain from this course?

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What experience do you have with psychological research?

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Tell me something interesting about yourself
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______/ Please attach a photo of yourself

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