Reflection
While taking ‘Statistics for The Social Sciences’ (SOCL 346) I have learned so much about as you can probably guess, statistics in relation to the social sciences. Throughout this course, my knowledge about how statistics works in the world of social sciences has enhanced greatly. During this course my class was taught computer application of quantitative and statistical techniques to sociological data, questionnaire construction, coding, sampling, building and maintaining data sets, probability, statistical distributions, hypothesis testing, and theoretical modeling. The goal of this class is for students to become proficient in the use of a statistical software package, which I did become proficient in both ‘rstudio’ and ‘SPSS’.
I am incredibly proud to say that after taking this course I can now explain basic concepts of social statistics, summarize numeric data by computing descriptive statistics (e.g. mean and variance) and by creating tables and graphs, compute and analyze various inferential statistics using both hand and computer calculation methods, and test hypotheses using the probability theory. To think I learned all of this over the semester makes me incredibly proud of myself, and really shows how much somebody can learn from one class!
An example of something I learned in class would be the ‘Chi-square Analysis’. Below is the chi-square analysis I performed for child engagement by highest degree of eduction anyone has in the household from the project I was working on.
Chi-square Analysis of child engagement by highest degree of education anyone has in the household.
| Highest Level of Education | Low Engagement | High Engagement X2 |
| High School or Less | 9 | 9 14.972** |
| College or More | 9 | 72 |
Note: p<.05*, p<.01**, p<.001***
The dependent variable for this Chi-square was engagement of the child. This was asked on a 0-10 scale. The independent variable for this Chi-square was highest degree of education anyone has in the household. Respondents chose either, “Less than High School”, “High School”, “Some College”, “College degree or higher” or “Prefer not to answer”. The Chi-square results reveal that there is no significant difference. Education did not have an effect on the amount of engagement.
As Dr. Pederson discussed, these skills will be useful to our careers in two ways. First, statistics is the primary analytical method in sociology (and many other social sciences). For the people in my class who pursue academic careers, their statistical ability will impact their performance in graduate programs as well as research potential. Second, statistics also has a practical value for people who pursue non-academic careers because some jobs require experiences in data management and analysis (e.g. federal and state government jobs, marketing positions). This is something I can relate myself to as I am looking to go into a non-academic career. I will be looking at going into the business world, where as many know I could very well come across a job that requires many of the skills learned in class. Therefore, mastering the materials in this course can really help improve my status as a job candidate.
This leads me to what I will do with the skills I have developed and enhanced from this class. As I am going into the business world, I am very interested in marketing! As mentioned above, statistics has a practical value for people who pursue non-academic careers, for example a marketing position. For this specific position I may encounter and have to complete data management and analysis for the company I work for. When I do encounter certain things such as data management for example, I will be able to know straight away how to do it as this is one of the many skills I have learned in class. Another great thing about my class that relates to the tasks I may encounter at a potential job is my binder I created. For class, every week we built a binder of instructions, examples, and tools we learned from class. So when I’m on my job this is a “cheat-code” for me as I can refer back to it with all the steps I need to complete a task.
So, if you are reading this and you work in business and are looking to higher a young motivated, dedicated, and hard working individual who can do all of the following above to the best of his ability, please email me at owen.ludlow@live.longwood.edu!