Throughout my enrollment in Statistics for the Social Sciences at Longwood University, I have learned a variety of new skills and different statistical tests when referring to social data. We learned how to compute a variety of tests using statistical program such as SPSS and RStudio. We learned how to recode variables and how to use this when analyzing data. For example, in our year-long research project our stats class conducted, we analyzed how family involvement would be influenced by utilizing an enhancer. For this study, we used Family Fun Time Activities, which were hands on activities that were sent out to families who were enrolled in the Head Start program, but also in the Andy Taylor Center here on the Longwood University campus. With these activities, surveys were sent home as well to be returned. This data was transferred to our stats programs for analytical purposes.
With this data, we learned how to conduct several statistical tests such as a t-test, an ANOVA, Chi-squared test, Correlation, etc. As well as learning how to run these tests on these two statistical programs, we also learned how to solve these tests by hand and how to find significance for these results.
With the skills I have acquired from this course, I feel confident that I can use these skills in a future potential career. Furthermore, we did document all we learned in a statistics manual which can be used to refresh our memories. Not only does this manual document all the tests we learned how to conduct, in SPSS, RStudio, and by hand, it also documents how to recode variables, measures of central tendency, probability, and confidence intervals.
These skills will also be beneficial if I have to take a more advance statistics class in graduate school. I feel as if I am better prepared to jump into these new roles that require these set of skills to perform the tasks required of me.
With the information I have learned in this course, I plan to use these set of skills to give myself an extra push in graduate school where I am confident these foundational skills will arise again. Thanks to this course, I will be better prepared to tackle whatever comes my way. In addition to these new skills required, I have also learned about the social problems related to family involvement in early childhood education. I learned, by conducting a t-test, an ANOVA, and Chi-Squared Test, that income does not influence family involvement overall. I do wish to learn what exactly influence better involvement from a child’s family.
In addition, with these new skills, I plan to help my peers get a better grasp of these foundational skills when needed later down my journey. As I am sure I will see this information again, I can use my manual we created to not only help myself, but those around me to get a better understanding of statistics for the social sciences.