Graduate Program in Psychology

Statistics, Methods and Measurement Minor

The goal of the statistics, methods and measurement minor is to provide students with an extensive tool kit of design and analysis skills. This minor is expected to have several benefits for the students who elect to enroll in it: (1) The most obvious advantage is that students who elect this minor will have an expanded set of skills to apply to their own research; (2) The minor will provide a sufficiently complete background in statistics and methods for minors to add these topics as teaching sub-specialties to their academic vitae, which could enhance marketability for teaching positions; and (3) Many graduate students who do not go on to academic positions rely on their research experience to get them jobs in the private sector. This minor prepares students for any variety of research or data analyst positions.

Minor requirements are fulfilled upon the completion of at least four additional courses above and beyond the required statistics sequence. At least two of these courses must be statistics courses (although all four courses may be). Methods courses may not exceed two courses toward the minor. One course requirement may be fulfilled by enrolling in the teaching practicum (Psch 587), and subsequently teaching one section of Psch 343 (psychological statistics). This "course" option can be used in addition to, but not replacement of, one of the two required statistics courses for the minor. Students may elect to do the teaching option only with the approval of the director of graduate studies, the chair of the SM&M minor, and their faculty advisor.

To propose a SM&M minor, students should prepare a proposal that includes the four courses they wish to use to fulfill minor requirements. Often students must rely on finding one or two courses outside of departmental offerings to complete their minor. For any courses you wish to propose using for fulfilling the minor that is offered outside the department, the student must include as part of their proposal the catalogue description of the course, and an indication that they have contacted the outside department to ensure that they are eligible to enroll in that course (e.g., have appropriate pre-requisites or can have them waived by the instructor), and can confirm that the course will be offered during the period of time the student intends to complete their minor requirements. Once completed, the proposed minor must be approved by the chair of the quantitative interest group (Linda Skitka). Other members of the quantitative interest group that can provide guidance on constructing the minor include Andrew Conway, Robin Miller, and Chris Fraley. The following list of courses can be used as a starting point for students wishing to declare the SM&M minor. Besides the required graduate sequence of statistics courses and division offerings of methods courses, the psychology department will usually offer one "special topics" course a year (e.g., structural equation modeling; categorical data analysis). To help students further round out their minor, additional courses outside the department that can be used are listed (presuming availability, etc.). This list is by no means exhaustive of all the courses that could be used in the SM&M minor, but should provide at least some guidance to the departments besides psychology that offer advanced statistics and methods courses.

Psychology 595 Special Topics in Statistics, Methods, and Measurement Courses to be developed as a function of the interests/skills of the faculty, but could include: Categorical analysis, Meta-analysis, Scaling, and the Significance Testing Debate
Psychology 544 Latent Variable Models
Psychology 595 Research Methods in Clinical and Community
Psychology 595 Program evaluation
Psychology 516 Research Methods in Social Psychology
Community Health Science 447 Survey Research Methods
Medical Education 494 Program Evaluation Methods
*Sociology 402 Intermediate Sociological Statistics (the general linear model, emphasizing simple and multiple regression; logistic regression)
Sociology 509 Sociological Statistics (Topics vary from semester to semester)* Structural Equation Modeling** Categorical Analysis Field Methods Network or event history (time series)
Sociology 408/ Anthropology 418 Ethnographic and Qualitative Fieldwork
Statistics 431 Introduction to Survey Sampling
Statistics 473 Game Theory
*Biostatistics 401 Biostatistics II (the general linear model, emphasizing simple and multiple regression; logistic regression)
Biostatistics 520 Nonparametric statistics
Biostatistics 530 Survival analysis
Biostatistics 540 Sampling and estimation methods
Biostatistics 550 Categorical Data Analysis
Biostatistics 595 Special topics in biostatistics
Public Administration 506 Data Analysis for Planning and Management
Urban Planning and Policy 512 Policy and program evaluation
Information & Decision Science 476 or Econ 450 Times Series Methods
Math 584 Applied Stochastic Models

*Highly recommended that students propose to take either Soc 402 or Biostat 401 if they also plan to take an SEM course. You will have a much better understanding of SEM if you get a very strong footing in regression first.

In all cases, students should discuss course possibilities with departments or instructors to ensure that these courses are going to be offered within the time frame they plan to complete their minor.