Methods and Statistics in Social Sciences

Where to start on my statistics journey? I could use some guidance as a lost graduate student.

Hello,

Long story short I got shafted by my MA program pretty hard in terms of hirable real-life skills. I'm trying to make up for it by self-study and trolling through coursera options; [this] (https://www.coursera.org/specializations/social-science) seems pretty appealing given my international background. (My MA is in International Development and has caused me a huge headache for a bucket of reasons that aren't relevant to my current question.)

I would like to move into a research or data analyst position, but I am not entirely sure where to look for these jobs, or how to become qualified/proficient. Is coursera a good place to start?

Thanks!

>> And facts show that there is no statistically significant difference in crime in concealed carry states vs other states

> we literally both agreed on this. I just think itd make for a better video if they had guns.

Okay, so this comment from you was a complete lie then. I understand what you are saying. I just wanted to check the level of self delusion and deception people like you were capable of. Well, like I said earlier, I highly recommend you take this free online course and work on admitting to yourself and others that you are wrong and just making things up to confirmation bias what your right wing information sources have mislead you to believe.

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/social-science

Have a nice rest of your night and work on your intellectual honesty.

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/social-science

Please dude, you are falling into every statistical pitfall, misunderstanding the difference between proving a hypothesis and a null hypothesis, misattribution of causation to raw data.

I’m sorry man I’d like to have a conversation but crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I pointed out the issues with your conclusion and data and you just keep repeating “proof” over and over again. I have told you about null hypotheses and failure to disprove and issues with causation and you skip right over those points, insisting your statistics are sound without grasping the most basic rules of statistical interpretation.

I can only offer my own perspective based on my own journey. You will ultimately have to judge for yourself what is applicable. I will try my best to keep this as short as I can.

First, I meditate a lot. This non-judgemental practice of gently bringing my mind back to my breathing helps me drop my judgments. It also helps me pay attention to the sensation instead of the thoughts. There are some types of meditations where I label my thoughts and emotions just to better understand my introspective private reality too. This is my, "truth."

Secondly, whenever I have a judgment of other people, I counter it immediately. I ask myself if their way might be better than mine. I go out of my way to look at alternative societies and ask myself what institutions or aspects might better the one I am in. I play with it in my mind and ask how life would be different. Having multiple perspectives is always good. The more lenses and perspectives you can get on your own life and how it could be different usually brings up new prescriptions for how to live your own life that you can choose to use or ignore. Studying philosophy really really helps with this too. In fact, a western philosophy crash course would be the audio-book... Sophie's World.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsSKQKuZKWw&list=PLAQC3DasNp-ZTlTHhgwm1ub8pGFSc3B6P&ab_channel=VincentPriceVO

At least listen to that if you are not acquainted with western philosophy before tackling eastern philosophy. Eastern philosophy is fairly difficult to dig into. I have more sources on it if you wish. It's worthwhile though.

Third, sometimes I imagine or wargame how my life would be different in alternative societies or with alternative philosophies. Would I still value the same things? If so, then it's likely that such values are my internal truths apart from my society.

Fourth, a more scientific perspective on, "Our Own Truth," would be to figure out your OCEAN five-factor personality. Then, from there you can figure out what your core values are and how to use these to your advantage both internally and externally. The most scientific and accurate personality test would be the IPIP-300. Yeah... it's 300 questions, but you only need to take it once.

https://www.personalityassessor.com/ipip300/?fb_comment_id=586844601349143_1495480067152254

Then, you might want to read this to figure out how to deal with your personality and core values.

https://globalleadership.org/articles/leading-others/vanessa-van-edwards-session-notes-gls-special-edition-2021/

Finally... and I hope you guys don't hate me for this. However, I cannot recommend enough cutting out all of the news groups and journalists, and going straight to the source of science. Learn how to critically analyze a peer-reviewed scientific paper. The less layers of middle men you have to go through to find truth, the more accurate your knowledge of truth and beliefs will be. I link a quick paper on how to do this, and a very comprehensive course that anyone can audit for free.

https://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~cainproj/courses/HowToReadSciArticle.pdf

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/social-science

So, I hope that together with the introspective and scientific, or perhaps just your selection of the pick, you can figure out your inner and outer truth.

I teach statistics in a psychology department. You would not be the first student to mindlessly make it through stats without really understanding it and you will not be the last. I have graduate students that cannot remember a single thing they learned from stats.

Will you have trouble in later classes? Maybe. It would be common for a research methods class to have you conduct a small experiment and analyze the results. You may have other advanced classes that also have you collect and analyze data (though usually nothing overly advanced). You will also be given original readings from journal articles that will have results sections full of stats that you will need to have at least a basic understanding of interpreting hypothesis testing.

I think you have demonstrated that it is difficult for you to take more than about 12 hours of coursework. You need to respect this limit. See if your math center has tutorial services for statistics and utilize them during your research methods class when you get to parts talking about data analysis.

You can also do some self learning over the winter break. Check out Khan Academy:

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/statistics-probability

Here is a class on Coursera:

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/social-science

(Probably only need the 3rd and 4th topics, and if I understand it correctly, it is free if you don't want their certificate, which is not really worth anything.)

You should be able to find more. Anything aimed at psychology, social science, education, or business should cover similar material you covered in your class. Anything aimed toward advanced math or computer science will likely cover different topics. Working on it now while it is still fresh in your mind would be best instead of waiting until summer or next fall to refresh yourself.

I like this Coursera specialization from University of Amsterdam https://www.coursera.org/specializations/social-science I would also recommend this learning course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/sciwrite/ For R, I remember learning it through swirl https://swirlstats.com/

I'm from a social science background and, like you, I often find myself hopelessly lost when it comes to what feels like very basic concepts in statistics. I think that's partly due to how statistics is taught in all non-mathematics disciplines - in theory we're taught how to use and evaluate quite complex statistical procedures, but with only 1-2 hours per week teaching, it's impossible for our lecturers to cover the fundamental building blocks that help us to understand what's actually going on.

Because of this, I've recently started a few MOOCs on Coursera, and I've found these massively helpful for covering research methods and statistics in far more depth than my undergraduate and postgraduate lecturers ever had time to delve into. In particular, a couple of courses I'd recommend are:

• Methods and Statistics in Social Sciences - This is particularly focused on quantitative methods in the social sciences (including quite a bit on behavioural and self-report research) so I'm not sure if it will be directly relevant with respect to neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience, but this gives a great introduction to research methods in general. I've actually only done the first course in this series (Quantitative Research Methods), but they're very comprehensive and well made, so I'm confident that the whole series will be useful for any researcher.
• Probability and statistics: To p or not to p? - This one is a little bit more maths-heavy so might be a bit intimidating if you don't find that sort of material easy, but it's a good introduction to some of the core concepts in quantitative research, including some you mentioned (e.g. probability distributions). You don't really have to fully engage with or grasp the maths for it to be useful either.

In terms of textbooks, I personally use Andy Field's Discovering Statistics Using R, and find that very helpful. Field is a psychologist who is very open about his difficulties with learning statistics, and I've found it quite useful and re-assuring to learn from someone with that mindset. He's also tried writing a statistics textbook in the form of a graphic novel, An Adventure in Statistics: The Reality Enigma, so if that sounds like something that might help you, check it out.

I think a few people from a 'purer' statistics background are a bit more critical about Field's books because they're not as comprehensive as a book written by, for example, a statistics professor - and there might be some advice in there that's a little bit out-of-date or not quite correct. He also has a very hit-and-miss cheesy sense of humour, which you'll either love or find very annoying. But I think he takes the right sort of approach for helping people who aren't necessarily mathematically-inclined to dip their toes into the world of statistics.

Kicking off the recurring questions around course prep and studying. Here is where I am and what I am doing in preparation.

Completed: https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/ibm-data-science

Currently practicing through: https://www.datacamp.com/join-me/NjI1Mjg4Mw==

Thinking about taking : https://www.coursera.org/specializations/social-science

If you're going to flare as INTP, and you talk about "wanting to see if there's a correlation" between literally anything, have some goddamn respect for yourself and at least properly act out the type you have chosen, and use proper methodology. That means you learn some basic fucking statistics and experiment design instead of shitposting.

You are not a Ti-dom, get fucking real.