ADVANCED QUANTITATIVE METHODS FOR PUBLIC POLICY

Public policy research tends to involve studying a population that has great variability, yet the entire population cannot participate in the study. The immediate challenge that researchers face is how to accurately draw generalizations on the basis of limited samples. Thus, the degree of variability in a population significantly compromises the accuracy of any possible generalization; which raises the question of how to draw inferences about parameters from statistics. This course focuses on the use of inferential statistics to compare variables and make reasonable generalizations about populations on the basis of sample analysis of frequency data; nonparametric and distribution-free statistical tests; and multilevel modelling. characteristics. Building on the contents of Quantitative Research Methods for Public Policy, the course covers the choice of appropriate method of data analysis; sampling distributions and hypothesis testing; correlation; regression analysis; statistical power; one-way and factorial analysis of variance; repeated-measures analysis of variance; chi-square test for