Course aims:

Acquiring the basic knowledge and skills necessary to apply descriptive and inferential statistics in the analysis of social phenomena.
Understanding the fundamental concepts of probability, distributions, estimation and hypothesis testing.
- Using computer programs for statistical calculations and graphical representations.
- Critical interpretation of statistical results in sociological contexts

Course Entry Requirements:

N/A

Course contents:

1. Introduction to statistics
- The role of statistics in scientific research
- The use of statistics in the sociologist profession
2. Preparing data for analysis
- Measuring the characteristics of variables
3. Presentation of a statistical analysis program (SPSS, PSPP)
- Building a database
4. Descriptive statistics - univariate
- Frequency distributions
- Graphical presentation of frequency distributions
- Relative frequencies, cumulative frequencies
5. Indicators of central tendency
- Mean
- Mode
- Median
- Mean deviation, standard deviation and variance
6. Indicators of dispersion
- Amplitude
- Standard deviation
7. Descriptive statistics - bivariate
- Testing statistical links depending on the type of variables
- Discrete variables and continuous variables
8 Contingency tables
- Definition and calculation of the HI squared size, statistical significance and association coefficients based on this value

9. linear covariance of two variables
- Correlation coefficient (Bravis-Pearson)
- One-Way ANOVA
- Calculating the correlation coefficient with the SPSS, PSPP program
- Interpreting data from correlation tables in SPSS, PSPP
10. Independent simple t test (t test) and Mann Whitney U test (for ordinal variables)
11 Regression analysis - Linear regression in the case of two variables
- General aspects, regression equation
- Interpreting the point cloud that graphically expresses the relationship between two quantitative variables
12 Association of nominal qualitative characteristics
- Symmetric indicators of the association of nominal qualitative characteristics
- Asymmetric indicators of the association of nominal qualitative characteristics
13 Association of ordinal qualitative characteristics
- Coefficient τa (Kendall's) and Coefficients τb and τc (Kendall's)

Teaching methods:

Lecture, Conversation, Exemplarifications

Learning outcomes:

A1 – Uses specialized computer applications and programs to manage databases with socioeconomic and cultural indicators.
R3 – Analyzes empirical data and critically evaluates sociocultural research efforts.
R6 – Constructs and evaluates relevant social indicators for social and cultural research.

Learning outcomes verification and assessment criteria:

C2 – Define and choose statistical methods for social research. A2 – Identify appropriate methods, techniques, procedures and instruments for the statistical analysis of social phenomena.

Recommended reading:

David S. Moore, George P. McCabe, Bruce A. Craig, Introduction to the Practice of Statistics, W. H. Freeman and Company, MY, 2021, 864.
Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, Jerome Friedman, The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction, Springer, -, 2017, 745.
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