Methods and Statistics

Course goals

After completing this course, students:
- have acquired insight in the foundations of empirical-analytical scientific research, in particular as found in research in the fields of language, linguistics, and communication. 
- will understand
 (1) which questions are suitable for scientific research,  
 (2) how various types of validity may be threatened, 
 (3) how valid research may be designed,
 (4) how data are described, summarized, analyzed, and used to make inferences as well as
 (5) the relations between these aspects of scientific research
- have acquired elementary practical skills in describing, summarizing, and analyzing data, and in using data to make inferences,
- have practiced the writing skills and other academic skills to report empirical findings. 

Content

First, you will become thoroughly acquainted with the foundations and principles and methods of empirical research, in particular of the type of research involving statistical techniques. What constitutes a good research question? What are the limitations of scientific knowledge? What properties of the design of a study allow us to draw valid and meaningful conclusions?
Secondly, you will be introduced to a variety of research methods often encountered in research in language, linguistics, and communication: the experiment, the questionnaire, and the corpus study. You will learn the stronger and weaker aspects of these methods, focusing mainly on the experiment.
Thirdly, you will learn the practical skills to perform elementary statistical analyses of empirical findings. You will also learn how to report, interpret and evaluate the outcomes of these analyses.


 

Additional information

In this course you will learn the basic principles and methods of empirical research, in particular the type of research that uses statistics. 

This course is equivalent to the following courses:
Methoden en statistiek 1 (TW2V17001 and TW2V19002),
Meth Hyp-Toetsend Oz (TL3V14002),

and cannot be taken in combination with Ciw-Empirisch onderzoek (CI2V13002) and Ciw- Methoden van Communicatieonderzoek (CI2V17002).

If you have already completed one of these courses, you may not take Methods and Statistics due to too much overlap in content.