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East Carolina University
Department of Psychology
Instructor: Karl L. Wuensch
Correct Pronunciation
Office: Rawl 137;------ Office Hours: Click here to see Karl's schedule.
Syllabus: Click here to see a formal list of the topics we shall cover this semester.
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Required Reading. In addition to the required text, 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.
Class Meetings: We meet from 1100 to 1215 on Mondays and Wednesdays in Rawl 304.
Grading
There will be three components of your final grade:
Each of these three is, at semester's end, transformed to a 100 point scale, producing a P-score. The transformation is to divide each student's raw score by the mean raw score achieved by the top-scoring student. If there are fewer than 5 students in the class I may elect to compute P-scores as the percentage of the total possible points earned rather than of the top score. Each student's three P-scores will be averaged to yield a mean P-score, [M] . Grade cutoffs for mean P-scores are 90 for an A, 80 for a B, 70 for a C.
If there are at least 5 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.
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.
Posting of Grades: If you would like to have your grades posted on the web, where you can view them at any time, you need to fill out the Grade Posting Form and return it to Dr. Wuensch. To bring the form into your word processor, just click onto the link for the form. After you have filled out the form, give it to Dr. Wuensch or mail it to him at: Dr. Karl L. Wuensch, Dept. of Psychology, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858-4353. Unless you complete this form, indicating that you wish to have your grades posted as described on the form, and deliver it to Dr. Wuensch, your grades will not be posted.
Quizzes and Exams
The quizzes and exams will be multiple-choice, true-false, short answer, computational, and/or essay. You may use calculators that do not have the capacity to store text.
Make-up exams for those with acceptable and documented excuses may be orally administered. I may elect not to accept late work or to accept it with penalty. I may elect to give you a predicted score (predicted from your past performance) on missed work rather than administering a make-up. 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.
Class Participation
Points may be earned by class participation. Students who do not wish to be evaluated on class participation can notify me in writing and I shall not call upon them in class. In lieu of class participation these students will prepare an APA-style manuscript reviewing the literature on some topic (approved in advance by me) in quantitative methods. The typed manuscript is due on the 3rd of November.
I expect each of you to develop a journal reading list of American Psychologist, APA Monitor, Psychological Bulletin, and at least three other journals which publish research reports in your area of interest. Students not in Psychology may develop a list more appropriate to their major. A Standing Assignment is to have available, for each major statistical technique we cover, a summary of published research that employs that technique. These will be graded as class participation or homework.
The Major Project
Each of you will complete a major project, which will involve your conducting a complete data analysis of a multivariate data set. You may obtain data from some archival or other source, or you may simulate data from a theoretical model. Obtain my approval of your proposed major project prior to investing a lot of time in it. Acceptable analytic techniques include: log-linear analysis of multidimensional contingency tables, multiple regression analysis which includes testing of moderation or mediation model, logistic regression, canonical correlation analysis, discriminant function analysis, multiple analysis of variance, multiple analysis of covariance, the multivariate approach to repeated measures ANOVA, principle components and factor analysis, path analysis, and other techniques for which the student obtains prior approval.
Students will present their major project in class near the end of the semester. See Required Research Presentation in PSYC 7433. The maximum number of points possible for the paper will be not more than 50% nor less than 25% of the total points possible for component C.
Plans for the Semester
Students in this class will have previously taken PSYC 7431 during either the fall of 2007 or the spring of 2008. In the fall semester class we did not cover factorial ANOVA in great detail, but we did complete all of the material on multiple regression, including logistic regression. In the spring semester class we did cover factorial ANOVA in great detail, but we only got through the basics of multiple regression. With apologies to those students who took PSYC 7431 in the fall, we shall start PSYC 7433 with a quick review of multiple regression followed by coverage of suppression, matrix methods, ANCOV, regression diagnostics, mediation models, moderation models, and logistic regression. From there we shall move on to other multivariate methods. I hope to have Dr. Cecelia Valrie guest lecture on hierarchical linear modeling (the analytic technique, not the software of the same name) sometime during the semester.
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).
Contact Information for the Webmaster,
Dr. Karl L. Wuensch
This page most recently revised on
10. July 2008.