Welcome to second-year statistics! A knowledge of
statistics is vital if we want to understand the world
around us because nothing stays the same. Almost every time
we look at the world, it changes. If you take two different
people and measure their personalities, they will have
different scores. If you take one person and assess them on
two different days, they will produce different scores. In
other words, the measurements you obtain from people always
vary. Psychologists use statistics to cope
with this variation. Essentially, we are interested in
saying:
"Measurements vary all the time. How much of this
variation is interesting? How much of it is caused by
psychological factors and how much of it is just
'random'?"
This course provides you with the information and skills
you need to answer questions like this. In particular, you
will learn to use the popular SPSS software package to
analyse data at the same time as learning the theory behind
the tests. By the end of the course you should be able to
decide which analysis to use in any given situation and
know how to carry it out.
