Data Analytics and Computation 602 - Research Design

This course introduces students to the basic language of behavioral research, with an emphasis on designing valid social science research. An emphasis is placed on measurement reliability and validity, internal research design validity, and generalizability, or external research design validity. Students will become familiar with a range of techniques used to gather social science data and measure and analyze different aspects of individual and social behavior, including experiments, surveys, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, coding of online and archival text sources, and social network analysis. Students will learn to identify threats to research validity and reliability associated with these different research approaches. All data analysis will be conducted in R. Students will also use Qualtrics and mTurk to collect data. This course is a required core course for the graduate certificate and the master?s degree in Data Analytics and Computational Social Science (DACSS).

Open to DACSS masters students and SBS PhD students only This course is a required core course for the Masters of Science and the Graduate Certificate in Data Analytics and Computational Social Science (DACSS). Open to DACSS masters and DACSS certificate students and SBS PhD students only, or by permission of the instructor. Please contact the instructor and DACSS@UMass.edu if you would like to enroll in this class and are not in one of the groups listed.

This course assumes a working knowledge of R. If you do not have a strong background in R (e.g., have not already taken and passed DACSS 601 Data Science Fundamentals or an equivalent), please contact the instructor to discuss strategies for preparing for this course.