166-081 Quantitative Social Research

Students who have previously enrolled in, and successfully completed 166-131 Sociology 1B in 1997 and 1998, cannot enrol in this subject.

Usually two first-year sociology subjects.

This subject teaches students the linkage between sociological theories and empirical data. Particularly this subject teaches students how to do sociology empirically by introducing the logic and major processes of quantitative social research via lectures and hands-on workshops or labs. The topics include deductive and inductive logic, research design, conceptualisation, operationalisation, questionnaire design, probability sampling, non-probability sampling, coding/recoding, identifying available on-line survey data sets and constructing uni-variate and bi-variate tables and graphs.

Written work totalling 4000 words.

• E Babbie, The Basics of Social Research. Wadsworth Publishing, 1999.