Teaching

The goal of the course is to provide students with the necessary skills needed to review/critique, analyze, interpret, and write-up studies involving nested (clustered) data using multilevel modeling (MLM). Clustered data (e.g., students within schools, patients within clinics) occur quite naturally in the social sciences and being able to understand and conduct their own analyses using nested data is an important skill. Alternatives are discussed as well.

This course is designed to provide students with both a theoretical and applied understanding of useful multivariate statistical procedures (e.g., factor analysis, principal components analysis, discriminant function analysis, cluster analysis, MANOVA) in education sciences.

Evaluating the quantifiable impact of social programs is a key task that policy makers, governments, and program funders perform. In education and the social sciences, a fundamental question asked is ‘How do we know our policy or program works?’

This course is designed to provide students the fundamental and necessary quantitative methods in educational research.

Good data management is a prerequisite for successful research, needed for reproducibility of results, and essential when collaborating with others.