Foundation Skills for Data Analysts - A preparatory course for researchers who are starting out with data analysis and statistics.
Dates:
14th September 2011
28th March 2012
Duration: 1 day (10am — 4:30pm)
Level: Introductory
Course Fee: £175 (£125 for those from educational institutions)
CCSR offers 5 free places to research staff and students within the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester and the North West Doctoral Training Centre.
Course Leader: Dr Jo Wathan
Course Requirements: No previous experience of data analysis is assumed, however participants should be familiar with working in the Windows environment.
Course Summary
This is a foundation course for participants with no previous experience in statistics or statistical analysis software. It will introduce key concepts such as: cases, variables, values and levels of measurement. A component of the course is use of SPSS in hands-on sessions. By the end of the day, participants will be able to open a data file, to do basic manipulations to the data, to produce descriptive statistics, one and two way tables and simple graphs. This course will provide participants with the appropriate background to progress to other CCSR courses, particularly Introduction to Data Analysis 1 and Introduction to Data Analysis 2.
Course Objectives
On completing the course, participants will have covered the following:
- How to open and explore datasets
- Key procedures for data manipulation including sub-setting and variable recoding
- Procedures for producing simple descriptive statistics for all or subsets of your cases
- Procedures for producing graphical output
Target Audience
The course is designed for those without previous experience of working with individual level survey data. It provides a good foundation for those wanting to go on and develop skills in exploratory and more advanced analysis of survey datasets inclduing as preparation for Introduction to Data Analysis 1 and Introduction to Data Analysis 2.
Preliminary Reading
- Field, A. (2009) Discovering Statistics Using SPSS for Windows. London, SAGE Publications.
- Diamond, I. and Jefferies, J. (2004) Beginning Statistics: An Introduction for Social Scientists. London, Sage Publications.
- Blaikie, N. (2003) Analyzing Quantitative Data: from description to explanation London, SAGE Publications.
- For information about Government surveys see the Economic and Data Service web site: http://www.esds.ac.uk/government/