Quantitative Research Methodology

URL study guide

https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/S_QNRM

Course Objective

At the end of the course, the student is able to:identify advantages and disadvantages of experimental and observational designs in terms of internal and external validitycausal models: recognize models with confounding variables, mediation and moderation in a question or hypothesisconstructing a scale and as part of scale construction apply reliability analysis in R, interpret the results and report on themapply analysis of variance and linear regression analysis in R; interpret the results and report on theminterpret results in terms of underlying causal models: confounding variables, mediation, and moderation

Course Content

In this course, students learn the basics of multivariate statistical techniques commonly used in quantitative research in communication science. The emphasis is on testing hypotheses about cause-and-effect relationships and the interpretation of the analysis results, both in experimental and in non-experimental research. This knowledge is useful not only for properly testing hypotheses yourself, but also for critically evaluating research conducted by others. This course teaches the theory and practice of quantitative research methods frequently used within communication science. The student learns the logic and purpose of experimental and observational research designs, as well as the advantages and disadvantages in terms of internal and external validity. Within the context of causal modelling, models with confounding variables, mediation and moderation will be discussed and results of analyses will be related to these causal models. Reliability analysis is applied in order to learn how to construct a reliable scale. Building upon the first year’s course Descriptive and Inferential Statistics, multivariate data analysis techniques will be introduced, focusing on analysis of variance and linear regression analysis. All mentioned techniques are applied using R.

Teaching Methods

lectures, working groups and R labs

Method of Assessment

interim tests and group assignments

Target Audience

Second year students bachelor Communication Science

Recommended background knowledge

Descriptive and Inferential Statistics