Quantitative Research Methodology

COURSE OBJECTIVE
After completion of this course, the student is able to:
• identify pros and cons of experimental and observational designs in terms of internal and external validity;
• causal models: recognize spurious relations, mediation and moderation;
• interpreting results in terms of underlying causal models: spurious relations, mediation and moderation;
• constructing a scale and as part of scale construction apply reliability analysis in SPSS, interpret the results and report on it;
• apply analysis of variance and linear regression analysis in SPSS; interpret the results and report on them.

COURSE CONTENT
This course teaches the theory and practice of quantitative research methods frequently used within communication science. The student learns the logic and purpose of experimental and observational research designs, as well as the advantages and disadvantages in terms of
internal and external validity. Within the context of causal modelling, spurious relations, mediation and moderation will be discussed and results of analyses will be related to these causal models. Reliability is applied in order to learn how to construct a reliable scale. Building upon the first year’s course Descriptive and Inferential Statistics, multivariate data analysis techniques will be introduced, focusing on analysis of variance and linear regression analysis. All mentioned techniques are applied using SPSS.

TEACHING METHODS
lectures, workshops and practicals

TYPE OF ASSESSMENT
exam and intermediate tests

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
Descriptive and Inferential Statistics