SOC 2015 - Doing Sociology: An Introduction to Social Research

An introduction to basic concepts and tools central to social scientific data analysis, including: basic forms of presentation (e.g., tables, charts, trendlines, scatterplots); basic tools of analysis (e.g., cross-tabulations, correlation, regression, statistical significance); and fundamental concepts of research design (e.g; sampling, causation, independent and dependent variables). This course provides a foundation for subsequent courses throughout the Sociology major. It is organized around online exercises addressing basic issues of sociological interest and teaches students to explore patterns in data, to conduct analyses, and to interpret findings.