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East Carolina University
Department of Psychology
PSYC 6430: Statistics and Research Design, Autumn, 2009
Instructor: Karl L. Wuensch
Correct Pronunciation
Office: Rawl 137 ------- Office Hours: Click here to see Karl's schedule.
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Class and Lab Meetings. We meet in Rawl 304 on Mondays and Wednesdays from 0930 until 1045. Your lab meetings are in Rawl 304 on Wednesdays from 1300 to 1450. I do not expect to be there often for the lab meetings, but shall be there on a few occasions. My teaching assistant, Sean Gasperson, will be supervising the lab meetings. Sometimes these lab meetings will be structured activities, Sean teaching you something, and other times they will be unstructured, with Sean being there to help you if you have problems with the computers, an assignment, etc.
Content of the Course. Topics covered will include basic principles of research design and basic univariate and bivariate statistics, with an emphasis on understanding hypothesis testing, parameter estimation, extraneous variable control, and causal inference. Consult the Online Syllabus for more detail.
Calculators. I shall introduce you to the algorithms used to calculate various descriptive and inferential statistics. You will be expected to be able to do such calculations [using a hand calculator] on exams. Calculators which can store/process text are forbidden during exams.
Computers. I shall instruct you in the use of the SAS statistical computing package. The University of North Carolina system has received a grant from SAS, Inc., which will allow every student to obtain, free of charge, a copy of the SAS statistical program. You can also get a free copy of SPSS (which is used in PSYC 7431), and I encourage to you do so before all of the free copies are gone. See Get SAS and SPSS.
Homework and Class-work. You will be assigned a number of homework projects during the semester. These will involve computation (with SAS) or hand calculation. I may not collect and grade all assignments, but you should prepare each with the expectation that I shall. I may not indicate beforehand which will be or will not be collected. Your class participation will be evaluated. You may be called upon to present to the class your solutions to a homework assignment or to discuss some issue of interest to the class. Points earned in this way, or through other class participation, may be added to your cumulative homework/classwork score.
At semester's end I shall transform cumulative scores on all classwork (homeworks and class participation) to P-scores (P = (100)X / T where X = your cum score, T = the mean cum score of the top 10% of the class, that is, the top score in a class of 6-14 students, the mean of the top 2 in a class of 15-25, etc.). If there are fewer than 6 students in the class, P scores will be the percentage of the total possible points earned.
Midterm Exam. There will be a midterm examination administered on Monday the 19th of October. A P-transformation will be applied. The multiple-choice questions will be computer-scored, so bring a #2 pencil and a blue computer answer sheet (the 8 1/2 x 11 inch size). These answer sheets can be bought at the university bookstore. I recommend that you check out my Tips for Students Taking Multiple Choice Tests before taking multiple choice examinations.
Final Exam. There will also be a final examination given on Monday the 14th of December from 0800 to 1030. Scores thereon will be transformed as on the midterm. It will be computer scored, bring necessary materials. Please see this note from the Provost about university policy regarding final exams.
Final Grades. Final grades will be based on the mean [M] of your transformed classwork, midterm exam, and final exam scores [the three transformed scores are summed and divided by three].
If your M is at least 90, you have an A; 80, a B; 70, a C; below 70 is an F.
If there are at least 6 students who complete the course, I shall also compute z-scores on the M's. The mean and the standard deviation I shall use will be computed from all registered students' M-scores after deleting any M's that are outliers, as defined by Tukey. If your z-score is +1/3 or more, you have an A; -2/3 or more, a B; -4/3 or more, a C; below -4/3, an F. You receive the higher of the two grades computed by the z-system and by the 10-point M system.
Journal Reading List. I expect each of you to develop a journal reading list consisting of at least five professional/scholarly journals relevant to your interests. For students in Psychology, two of these journals must be American Psychologist and Psychological Bulletin. A Standing Assignment is to have available, for each major statistical technique we cover, a summary of published research that employs that technique. For example, when we start covering Pearson chi-square analysis of contingency tables, I expect you to have available a summary of a published research report that employed Pearson chi-square.
Required Reading. In addition to the required texts, you are responsible for reading materials on the list at Readings for Students in Graduate Statistics. This list includes materials for PSYC 6430, 7431, and 6433.
Late Work. I may elect not to accept late work or accept it with penalty. I may elect to give you a predicted score (predicted from your performance on other tasks) on a missed quiz rather than administering a make-up. To be fair to those students who complete their assignments on time, assignments turned in late can earn a score no greater than the lowest score earned by those students who completed their assignments on time. I may also apply a 10% penalty for a first late assignment, a 20% penalty for a second late assignment, a 30% penalty for a third late assignment, and so on.
Cheating. The penalty for any detected plagiarism or other cheating is failure in the course and a note to the chair of our department for further action.
How Far Can We Go? I would like to finish chapters 1 - 13 in Howell. I would be thrilled if we could cover more than this. I will not be surprised if we finish less than this, given that the department has reduced the number of professor/student contact hours from 5 to 3 and the university has reduced the semester from 15 weeks to 14 weeks.
Behavioral Objectives. Read the Behavioral Objectives for this course.
PSYC 7431. The second semester of our graduate statistics sequence is PSYC 7431. PSYC 7431 will include a general introduction to multivariate statistics. We shall study multiple regression in great detail and we shall learn how to do complex ANOVAs that were not adequately covered in PSYC 6430, including higher-order factorial designs, designs with repeated or matched factors, nonorthogonal designs, and least squares solutions. Time permitting, we shall then study other multivariate techniques in greater detail. You will learn both SAS and SPSS in PSYC 7431.
Target Dates. Check out the Target Dates for this course. I have included dates by which we should have completed various portions of the course, but you should treat these only as rough guidelines. I adjust my coverage of these topics to match the needs of my students, so some semesters we take more time on some topics and less on others than in a typical semester.
Readings in Cody and Smith. Each time we cover a new statistic you should read the materials relevant to that statistic in Applied Statistics and the SAS Programming Language. Consult the Correspondence Table, which indicates what chapters you should read in Applied Statistics and the SAS Programming Language when we are covering a particular chapter in Howell's Statistical Methods for Psychology.
ADA. East Carolina University seeks to comply fully with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Students requesting accommodations based on a disability must be registered with the Department for Disability Support Services located in Slay 138 (252) 737-1016 (Voice/TTY).
Karl Bragging. Lets have a good, productive semester together. Click here to view some statistics regarding the post-graduation Benefits of this course. You will find that most of our graduates report that this course was quite beneficial. Click here for a collection of Testimonial Letters from previous students of this course and my undergraduate statistics course.
Sending E-Mail to Karl
You can send me email through Blackboard, but it will not put your name on the e-mail. Accordingly, you must remember to type your name in the email or I will not easily know from whom it came. Regardless of how you send your email, please start the subject line with PSYC 6430: and then give a descriptive title -- for example, "PSYC 6430: Query regarding heteroscedasticity." Outlook sorts my email by the subject line, and if your subject line is properly composed, I will be sure to read it. Guess what happens if your email does not contain a subject line: here is the answer.
Contact Information for the Webmaster,
Dr. Karl L. Wuensch
This page most recently revised on
2. August 2009.