1. Quantitative Research Methods for Information Systems and Management (Info 271B) Course Introduction: Preface to Social Research and Quantitative Methods

2.  Coye Cheshire (coye@)  Office 305A  Office Hours Thurs 3:45-5:45pm  Graduate Instruction Assistant  Andrew Fiore (atf@)  Office hours: Wednesday 2-3:30 pm, Room 2 (for now)  Course Website: http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i271b/s09/

3.  Part lecture, part skills development  Usually one major topic per week  Some time devoted to working with statistical software packages (labs)  Three major course sections  Research Methodology (weeks 1-4)  Probability and Statistics (weeks 5-10)  Bivariate and Multivariate Analyses (weeks 11-15)

4.  Primary Text:  Statistics (4 th Edition) Freedman, Pisani and Purves http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393929728/simiansbooksonli

5.  Course Reader  (Copy Central, Bancroft)

6.  All course examples will use STATA  You can purchase a STATA 10 license ($95) through the grad plan: http://stata.com/order/new/edu/gradplans/gp-campus.html

7. Bring your laptop to class if applicable. We will devote class time in many sessions to working with statistical software. If you choose not to bring a laptop to class, we encourage you to sit with anyone who has a statistical software package when we begin to use it in class.

8.  Four “lab assigments” (40%)  Always started in class, due following week  Some are individual assignments, others are group assignments.  Final Exam (50%)  Will cover major topics in class  Will allow you to use the dataset of your choice.  Challenging, but will be a take-home exam allowing plenty of time to complete.  Participation and Instructor Discretion (10%)

9.  You will have good knowledge of common research methods used in quantitative research (surveys, experiments)  You will be able to prepare, recode and error-check numeric data  You will be able to use a general purpose statistical package to conduct statistical analyses  You will understand basic univariate statistics, bivariate statistics and linear regression

11. Part I: Research Methods  Defining and justifying research problems for quantitative studies  Theory and Measurement  Sampling, Survey Data Collection, Questionnaires  Experimental design  Choosing methods to match research problems

12. Part II: Probability and Statistics  Probability and Sampling  Working with structured data (recoding, error checking)  Univariate statistics  Probability and normal distributions

13. Part III: Bivariate and Multivariate Analyses  Bivariate Statistics (correlation, t-test)  Chi-Square (analyzing nominal data)  Linear Regression (bivariate and multivariate)

14. Info 271B 14

15. And, what do you want to get out of this course?

16.  Reader:  Bernard Chapter 2  We will begin with an intro to foundational concepts in social research methods, common terms.  Come prepared to discuss!