I have learned a lot of things from my time at Longwood university. One of course that I have learned a lot from is Sociology 346 which is a Statistics course for the social sciences. This class as given me certain skills like analytical thinking, sampling techniques, and quantitative data description and analysis. This class has also given the ability to use R, SPSS, and Excel for data analysis and inferential statistics. Specifically, I have learned the difference between various statistical techniques and the proper techniques for different research questions and data. I learned how to recode data into SPSS and RStudio, how to find the measure of central tendency, how to find measures of variability, how to find Z-scores and probability, how to find confidence intervals, t-tests, analysis of variance, Chi-squared test, correlation, and regression. Therefore, this course has provided me with the skills and materials help make me better at hypothesis testing and theoretical modeling. This course has also required me to create a statistics manual. This statistics manual was created to describe everything that I have learned in this course in my own words.
In a larger context this course has provided the skills that give me the ability to convey complex statistical information to a diverse audience. I have gained a better comprehension of doing research and evaluating a research question on my own. I feel even more confident about my ability to evaluate and comprehend quantitative and qualitative findings. I also feel better about my ability to evaluate survey and questionnaire data. Being able to evaluate any type of data is important because it helps me be able to explain data and my research hypothesis when I understand statistics.
The skills I have learned from this class can be useful for me to know for my future career. This is because statistics is the primary analytical method in social sciences. These skills could benefit me if I were to pursue an academic career or pursue graduate programs because my statistical ability could impact my research potential and my performance. The skills I have learned can also benefit me when if I were to decide to pursue a non-academic career because some jobs require experiences with data management and analysis. This course has required me to create a statistics manual. This manual I have created can help me in my future career or job because it can help me do whatever analysis I need to do in any way that is required of me.