Social Research Methods
Instructor
Ishida, Hiroshi
Schedule
Winter Semester; Wed.; Time slot #3
Description
Social surveys and social research methods have been established as effective
tools for social science investigation in recent period. Social surveys
collect raw data from the primary field. This course examines various
methods of conducting social surveys. Participants will construct hypotheses,
conduct small-scale survey on questions related to the hypotheses, input
the survey data, clean the data set, and analyze the collected data set.
In addition, the participants will conduct secondary analysis of the large-scale
national survey data set which can be obtained from the data archive and
will learn how to apply different analytical techniques to the survey
data.
The course first examines the papers which analyzed social survey data,
and the participants will have hands-on experience of collecting and analyzing
data set. The participants will be divided into groups according to their
interests, and the data collection and analysis will be done as a group.
In the course of the analysis of data, brief introduction to statistical
software (stata) and introductory lectures on basic statistical analysis
will be provided. The ultimate goal of this course is to write a social
science monograph using social survey data.
Course materials
Evaluation