Advanced statistical methods for psychology using R (P02352)

? Credit Points : 10 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : PPL-P-P01582

The course provides an advanced level examination of a variety of statistical analysis techniques and methodology issues relevant to psychological research. The course gives students an introduction to R, a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics, based on the S language. R is a flexible and increasingly popular package for statistical analysis. It provides a wide variety of statistical and graphical techniques, including facilities to produce well-designed publication-quality plots.

The environment is highly extensible, and is increasingly being adopted as the platform of choice for research in statistical methodology and in modern applied statistics in the social sciences, including psychology (see: Social Sciences and Graphics at http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Views/).

Lecture sessions are designed to give students an overview and introduction to the individual methodologies. These will be supplemented by Lab sessions which will give students extensive practical experience of working with a highly interactive statistical package.

The course comprises ten seminar and lab sessions. A typical syllabus would include:
1. Research with children and special groups
2. Qualitative approaches to data analysis
3. Single case studies.
4. Introduction to the R statistical programming language: data manipulation and re-shaping.
5. Statistical graphics.
6. Descriptive and inferential statistics. (usually including t-tests, non-parametric tests, chi-squared and correlations).
7. Power analysis.
8. Modelling I: regression, ANOVA.
9. Modelling II: mixed-effects, SEM.
10.Exploratory factor analysis

Venue: M2A/B Appleton Tower

Entry Requirements

none

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Psychology, (School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, Schedule I)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Semester 2 (Blocks 3-4)

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

? Other Required Attendance : 1 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
21/01/2009	14:00	17:00	Tutorial Room M2A, Appleton Tower	Central

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Wednesday	14:00	17:00	Central

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

1. Understand a variety of issues regarding the choice of statistical analysis techniques for standard and unusual data sets.
2. Understand how to use the R language as a tool for data manipulation, analysis and graphics.
3. Become adept in expressing statistical models typically used in psychological research and interpreting their results.

Assessment Information

A Data Analysis Exercise. This will comprise the analysis of a given set of data and presentation of results. The analysis should be performed and then written in the style of a results section of a journal article with commentary. Word limit: approximately 3000 words.