NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY
GRADUATE COURSE ACTION FORM
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Department/Program / Sociology and AnthropologyCourse Prefix/Number / SOC706
Previous Prefix/Number / SOC791K
Date of Last Action
Course Title / Introduction to Quantitative Sociological Analysis
Abbreviated Title / intro quant soc
Scheduling Fall Spring Summer Every Year
Alt. Year Odd Alt. Year Even Other
Credit Hours 3 / Offered by Distance Education Only
Contact Hours Lecture/Recitation Seminar 3 Laboratory Problem
Studio Independent Study/Research Internship/Practicum/Field Work
Grading / ABCDF S/U
Instructor / Theodore N. Greenstein
Graduate Faculty Status Associate Full
TYPE OF PROPOSAL
New CourseDrop Course
Course Revision
Dual-Level Course
REVISION
Content
Prefix/Number
Title
Abbreviated Title
Credit Hours
Contact Hours
Grading Method
Pre-Corequisites
Restrictive Statement
Description
Scheduling
Anticipated Enrollment / Per semester 20 Max.Section 25 Multiple sections Yes No
Prerequisite(s) / Soc711
Corequisite(s)
Restrictive Statement / Restricted to graduate students in sociology
Curricula/Minors
Required
Qualified Elective / M.A, M.S., Ph.D. Sociology
Proposed effective date / 1/1/2004 / Approved effective date / ______
Catalog Description: limit to 80 words
Introduction to quantitative analysis for sociologists. Calculation and interpretation of common descriptive and inferential statistics through bivariate correlation and regression. Use of commonly-available statistical software packages in sociological research. Preparation of manuscripts for quantitatively-oriented sociological journals.
DOCUMENTATION AS REQUIRED
Please number all document pagesCourse Justification
/Proposed Revision(s) with Justification
/Student Learning Objectives
/Enrollment for Last 5 Years
/New Resources Statement
/Consultation with other Departments
/Syllabus (Old and New)
/Explanation of differences in requirements of dual-level courses
/Recommended by:
______
Department Head/Director of Graduate Programs Date
Endorsed by:
_________
Chair, College Graduate Studies Committee Date
______
College Dean(s) Date
Approved:
______
Dean of the Graduate School
Course justification
While sociology employs a wide variety of research strategies, quantitative analysis is the mainstay of sociological research. Within the graduate program in sociology, doctoral students must take five courses in research methods and analysis. The proposed course has been offered under various numbers (SOC791K, SOC810K, SOC591K) over the past 15 years and has served as a prerequisite to the required SOC707 (Quantitative Sociological Analysis). While much of the course content is statistical in nature, the course differs from traditional statistics courses by emphasizing applications to theoretical and empirical problems in sociology. The course also focuses on training sociologists to use commonly-available statistical software such as SAS not just for analytic purposes but also for data manipulation and transformation.
Student learning objectives
See attached syllabus.
Course enrollment for last five years
Spring 2003: 22
Fall 2001: 12
Fall 2000: 20
Fall 1999: 15
Fall 1998: 15
New resources statement
No new resources are necessary to offer this course. Several faculty in the department have the necessary skills to teach the course.
Syllabus (attached)
SOC791K (Introduction to Quantitative Sociological Analysis)
Spring 2003
Prof. Theodore N. Greenstein
307 1911 Building (515-9006)
Course description
This course is a graduate-level introduction to quantitative analysis for sociologists. No mathematical background other than basic arithmetic skills is assumed. The course will cover many of the same topics covered in the typical undergraduate course on quantitative analysis: characteristics of data distributions, levels of measurement, cross-classification, measures of association, bivariate and multiple correlation and regression, probability, sampling and sampling distributions, hypothesis testing, one- and two-sample tests for means and variances, ANOVA, and chi-square. However, you will be expected to deal with these concepts on a much more sophisticated level than in the undergraduate course. The focus of the course is on how we obtain and report these results, not just what they mean. To that end, a major portion of the course will be devoted to learning about the SAS System for organizing, analyzing, and graphing quantitative data.
Make no mistake: this course will take a great deal of your time. To learn these techniques you must read about them and practice using them; you should expect to spend at least 10-15 hours per week on this course outside of class. Your work with the computer will be time-consuming and often frustrating. You will make many mistakes in the process, but you will learn from these mistakes. You are encouraged to work collaboratively on the homework assignments (although the work you turn in should be your own).
Course objectives
The first objective of this course is to train you to become an intelligent consumer of statistical analysis techniques commonly used in sociological research. You will not be expected to become expert in the theories or mathematics underlying these techniques (although we will consider them in passing); rather, the emphasis will be on understanding the meaning of the analyses. After successfully completing this course, you will be better able to understand and critique current quantitative research.
Another objective of this course is to encourage you to be not only an intelligent consumer of sociological research; ideally, you should be a critical consumer, as well. By that I mean that you should willing and able to question the assertions made by authors of sociological analyses.
A third objective of this course concerns your ability to produce written reports of your research. There are two indicators of this ability in the context of this course. The first of these indicators is your ability to utilize commonly-available computer packages to apply the statistical techniques discussed in this course to actual data. We will use SAS throughout the course, and helping you become familiar with its use is an important goal of the course. The second indicator of your ability to produce research is your ability to report research findings in a systematic fashion. To this end, you will be preparing a term project that requires you to learn and use the format and style of professional journal articles.
In order to better prepare you for the kinds of work you will likely do as a professional sociologist, we will use actual data from the General Social Survey (GSS) and other large national probability samples for our assignments and exams. The GSS is a national probability sample of Americans that has been administered periodically since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The content of the interviews is determined by an advisory board of social scientists and includes items covering a wide range of issues of interest to sociologists and others.
Grading
Your grade in this course will be based on four elements.
· Homework assignments (25%; 250 points). There will be 9 homework assignments posted during the semester; you must submit your response by the posted deadline in order to be eligible for credit. Assignments are graded S+ (3 points) (outstanding; well beyond the expectations of the assignment); S (2 points) (met all expectations with no important errors or omissions); S- (1 point) (generally acceptable, but with at least one important error or omission); and U (0 points) (unsatisfactory). You must average a "S" grade in order to get all 250 possible points. If you fail to turn in an assignment by the deadline, you will receive a grade of "U" -- but you must still complete the assignment satisfactorily in order to get credit for the course.
· Midterm exam (25%; 250 points). An inclass open-book, open-notes exam; coverage will be announced in class.
· Final exam (25%; 250 points). An inclass open-book, open-notes exam; coverage will be announced in class.
· Term project (25%; 250 points). You will develop a research question, derive hypotheses, analyze appropriate data, and present your findings in a journal-article formatted manuscript.
Individual assignments and exams will not be assigned letter grades; instead, at the end of the semester your point total will be used to determine your letter grade as follows: A+, 97-100%; A, 93-97%; A-, 90-93%; B+, 87-90%; B, 83-87%; B-, 80-83%; C+, 77-80%; C, 73-77%; C-, 70-73%; D+, 67-70%; D, 63-67%; D-, 60-63%, F, 0-60%.
Required reading
· Social Statistics for a Diverse Society, Chava Frankfort-Nachmias & Anna Leon-Guerrero, Pine Forge, 2002, 0-7619-8668-5
· The Little SAS Book, Lora D. Delwiche & Susan J. Slaughter, SAS Institute, 1996, 1-55544-215-3
Policy on late assignments
You are solely responsible for submitting your work by the deadlines. In scheduling your work, you should consider the problems that might be created by computer crashes, network and hardware problems, etc. The best way to avoid last-minute problems is to submit your work early.
No credit will be granted for late assignments for any reasons whatsoever, including problems with your computer or your ISP (Internet Service Provider).
Your assignments must be submitted (using the "Student files" and "Submit assignment" buttons under "Assignments") prior to the deadlines (the "Submit assignment" button will not function after the deadline).
Policy on religious, racial, ethnic, and sexual harassment
If an instructor (including me) or any of your peers says or does anything that you consider religious, ethnic, sexual or racial harassment, notify the instructor immediately. If the incident occurs in this class, you may write me an anonymous note or contact me in person. Complaints can also be directed to the NCSU Affirmative Action Office (515-3148) or to the Women's Center (515-2012).
Accommodations for students with disabilities
NC State is subject to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Section 504 provides that:
"No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States. . . shall, solely by reason of his handicap be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
This regulation includes students with hearing, visual, motor, or learning disabilities and states that colleges and universities must make "reasonable adjustments" to ensure that academic requirements are not discriminatory. Modifications may require rescheduling classes from inaccessible to accessible buildings, providing access to auxiliary aids such as tape recorders, special lab equipment, or other services such as readers, note takers, or interpreters. It further requires that exams actually evaluate students' progress and achievement rather than reflect their impaired skills. This may require oral or taped tests, readers, scribes, separate testing rooms, or extension of time limits.
For more information, contact the NCSU Office of Disability Services for Students.
If your participation in any aspect of this course is affected by a qualified disability, please let me know what I can do to facilitate your learning.
Policy on academic integrity
Scholarly activity is marked by honesty, fairness and rigor. A scholar does not take credit for the work of others, does not take unfair advantage of others, and does not perform acts which frustrate the scholarly efforts of others. A scholar does not tolerate dishonesty in others. The violation of any of these principles is academic dishonesty. Academic dishonesty includes the giving, taking, or presenting of information or material by a student with the intent of unethically or fraudulently aiding oneself or another person on any work which is to be considered in the determination of a grade or the completion of academic requirements. More specific definitions are described in the NCSU Code of Student Conduct.
Submission of assignments, exams, or other materials in this course presumes acceptance of this policy by the student. If you are found to be in violation of this policy I will recommend to the appropriate authorities that you be taken out to the brickyard and hung by the neck until dead.
Course calendar
Date / EventJanuary 9 / First day of classes
F-N&L-G 1
January 14 / Introduction
[1]
January 16 / Using the SAS system
D&S 1-5; [2]
January 21 / Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday
January 23 / Levels of measurement
F-N&L-G 2,3; [3]
Assignment 1 due
January 28 / Univariate distributions
F-N&L-G 4,5; [4], [5]
Proposal due
January 30 / The normal distribution and z-scores
[6]
February 4 / Preparing a journal article
[25]
Assignment 2 due
February 6 / Crossclassification
F-N&L-G 6; [7]
February 11 / Measures for nominal data
F-N&L-G 6; [8]
February 13 / Assignment 3 due
February 18 / Measures for ordinal data
[9]
February 25 / Measures for interval data
F-N&L-G 8; [10]
Assignment 4 due
February 27 / Assignment 5 due
March 4 / Elaborating the relationship
F-N&L-G 9; [11]
March 6 / Assignment 6 due
March 10 / SPRING BREAK
March 18 / Probability and sampling
F-N&L-G 10; [12]
March 20 / Midterm exam
March 25 / Sampling distributions
F-N&L-G 11; [13]
March 27 / Assignment 7 due
April 1 / Point and interval estimates
F-N&L-G 12; [14]
April 8 / Hypothesis testing
F-N&L-G 13; [15]
April 10 / Rough draft of project due
April 17 / HOLIDAY BREAK
April 22 / Hypotheses about central tendency
[16]
April 29 / Hypotheses about association
F-N&L-G 14; [17]
Assignment 8 due
May 1 / Review and summary
F-N&L-G 15
Assignment 9 due
May 5 / Final draft of project due
May 13 / FINAL EXAM