The course facilitates the development of skills necessary to design ethical research projects that lead to efficacious decision-making. Special attention is given to identifying pertinent research questions and relevant variables or factors that need to be considered in answering those questions; this stage of the research project includes analyzing and synthesizing related literatures. Instruction then moves on to identifying and developing ways to collect data with respect to the study’s research questions. Establishing validity and reliability in survey designs is stressed. Students learn about sampling procedures and generalizing sample-generated data to larger populations. With respect to research questions and the nature of variables, students will learn to use at least one of a number of statistical tests available in Microsoft Excel. The learner will explain the statistical and practical significance of results generated by scenarios analyzed by statistical tests.
Learning Outcomes: