Sociology 201A
Research Methods:  Quantitative Approaches
Course Syllabus

This site supports an introductory course in research methods offered by Robert Hanneman in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside.  Please feel free to use and reproduce any materials in this site.  Your comments and suggestions are very welcome.  During regularly scheduled offerings of this course, supplementary materials (e.g. discussion boards, ftp server, grade book, calendar, etc.) can be found on the UCR instructional web server.  The current posting supports an offering in Fall, 2005-06.

Meetings:  Sociology 201A meets each Thursday of the quarter (from Sept. 29) from 4:10pm until 7:00pm.  There is no meeting on Nov. 24th, which is an administrative holiday.  We will meet in Watkins Hall 2141, thought there will be occasional visits to computer labs and other sites on campus.

We will sometimes meet at the Statistical Consulting Collaboratory  (Sproul Hall 2228).  This laboratory is for the exclusive use of graduate students and faculty doing quantitative work in the social sciences.  At our first class meeting, we will visit the lab, and you will get a door access code and user account.

Instructor:  My office in Watkins hall (Watkins 1144).  My phone numbers is 951-827-3638.  E-mail is probably the most robust way to contact me ( robert.hanneman@ucr.edu ).  More information about me is available from my web site.

My office hours for the quarter have not been set yet.  They will be announced in class, and are also available on my web site.  I am happy to schedule appointments to meet at other times.  And, feel free to drop in at my office.

Readings:  There are many excellent works available that deal with basic research methods.  If you know of readings that you think are particularly good or helpful, I invite you to post suggestions to the discussion board at our web site, so that others might benefit.  I've selected text and some commonly used supporting volumes.  Unfortunately these are quite expensive, and you may find it in your interest to make a single ("fair use") copy for your own use rather than purchasing all of them.  The works are available in the Tomas Rivera library reserve collection during the quarter, and many are downloadable from this web site.  There are also excellent resources available on the Internet (and also a lot of not-excellent resources!).

		Frankfort-Nachmias, Chava and David Nachmias.  2000.  Research Methods in the Social Sciences.  NY: Worth.  Purchase or copy this text.
		Miller, Delbert C. and Neil J. Salkind.  2002.  Handbook of Research Design and Social Measurement.  Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage Publications.  Some sections are on-line, others may be xeroxed.  You may want to purchase this as a general reference work, but examine it first.
		Rossi, Peter H., James D. Wright, and Andy B. Anderson (eds.).  1983.  Handbook of Survey Research.  San Diego:  Academic Press, Inc.  You probably don't want to purchase this, unless you intend to study survey research methods more intensively.

Objectives:  Sociology seeks to apply the logic of scientific method to develop and test theories of relations among social actors.  This course is one of four devoted to methods and statistics that are required in the first year curriculum of the graduate program in Sociology.  Sociology 201A deals with the general logic of scientific inquiry, research design, sampling, measurement, and the techniques of certain "structured" methods of data collection.  Sociology 201B continues the survey of methodology by focusing attention on less structured methods of data collection.  Two associated courses (Sociology 203A and B) focus on the use of statistical analysis.  Sociology 201A assumes prior coursework in methodology and basic statistics at the undergraduate level.

By the end of this course, you should be able to conceptualize a research problem and develop a number of complementary design, measurement, and data collection approaches to bring evidence to bear on the the problem.  You should be able to prepare a research proposal, and critically evaluate the quality of evidence in published social research.

Grading and requirements:

There will be numerous assessments of various kinds over the quarter.

For each required chapter in the Nachmias text, students are to complete a short on-line reading quiz by the dates announced in class (and on the web site).  These are a study tool, and scores will not be recorded.  Students may earn up to 10% of the course grade by completing all quizzes by the required dates.

A mid-term and a final examination will be given in a computer lab.  Each exam will be multiple choice questions based on the Nachmias text.  Each exam counts 25% toward the course grade.

Each student will present a summary of a research article and lead discussion of it once during the quarter.  The presentation will be evaluated by your colleagues, and counts 10% toward the course grade.

A term paper is due on Monday of the examination week (Dec. 9th).  The term paper counts 30% of the course grade.

Schedule:  (Subject to change.  Watch the website for announcements and for changes to the course calendar).

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