Essex Summer School in
Social Science Data Analysis

Rob Johns

Rob Johns is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. Appointed at Essex in 2010, his previous post was at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Rob’s research is in the fields of political psychology, public opinion and electoral behaviour. He has published various books and articles based on analyses of public opinion data, most recently from a major survey of the British public’s foreign policy attitudes.

1G Introduction to Survey Data Analysis

Rob Johns, University of Essex
9 - 20 July (two week course / 35 hrs)

Detailed Course Outline [PDF]

THIS COURSE IS NOW FULLY BOOKED AND WE ARE OPERATING A WAITING LIST

Course Content

It has never been easier to get hold of survey data. But they still need to be analysed. This course provides an introduction to a wide range of statistical techniques that are used with survey data. We begin with core concepts – means, deviations, distributions, confidence intervals, and so on – and then move on to the core statistical methods, covering crosstabulation, t-tests, analysis of variance, correlation, and various forms of regression. These methods will be demonstrated using the computer package Stata and a variety of example datasets. Students can also bring their own datasets on which to practise the different methods.

Course Objectives

Participants will become adept in using a wide range of statistical methods for analysing survey data. These methods are widely used by both academic and professional researchers in a wide range of fields: political science, sociology, psychology, health sciences, sports science, marketing, and so on. Participants will also acquire a good working knowledge of Stata, a widely used program for analysing statistical data. In addition to boosting participants’ current skills, this course also serves as a springboard for the study of more advanced statistical methods – many of which are available in later sessions at the Summer School. (The course works particularly well in conjunction with the Introduction to Survey Design course, available in Session 2, which guides participants in how to collect the kind of data analysed in this course.)

Course Prerequisites

This is an INTRODUCTORY course. The instructor understands that students may have had only a basic understanding of statistics at the high school level. Nothing more than basic algebra and a desire to analyse survey data is assumed on the part of the student.

Representative Background Reading

Since this is an introductory course, participants are not required to do any prior reading. However, those a bit nervous about confronting statistics may benefit from a quick look at the gentle introduction provided by:

Salkind, Neil J., 2010. Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics (4th edn.), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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