Sociology 543

Quantitative Methods II

Tuesday, 4-6:00 PM, 6080 ISR

Instructor: Yu Xie (e-mail: yuxie@umich.edu)

Semester: Winter 2009

Office Hours: Wednesday 10-12 or by appointment. Office location: 2074 ISR (936-0039).

Prerequisite: Successful completion of Sociology 542 or its equivalent.

Objective: This course discusses practical difficulties commonly encountered in quantitative research, with a special emphasis on research design. Students are encouraged to attend a seminar series sponsored by the Quantitative Methodology Program (QMP), under a separate course number Sociology 810.

A small, informal, seminar-like classroom environment is desired. No sit-ins are welcome without the explicit permission from the instructor. There will be no exams. Students are expected to participate in class discussions and complete an empirical term paper at the end of the semester.

This class fulfils the “Quantitative Methods Practicum” requirement for a doctoral degree in the Department of Sociology

Research Paper: A research paper is required by the end of the semester. The objective is to apply one of the statistical methods taught in the course to a substantive research area of the student's choice with a real dataset. A thorough literature review, theoretical argument, and empirical evidence are all important. Ideally, the student will bring a data set to the course so that appropriate statistical methods can be applied to the analysis of the data. Please see the instructor as soon as possible if you do not have a project in mind.

Course Outline

Week 1

Tuesday, January 13

Topic: Introduction and Preliminaries

Week 2

Tuesday, January 20

Topic: “Philosophy of Social Science”

Week 3

Tuesday, January 27

Topic: “Publish or Perish”

Week 4

Tuesday, February 3

Topic: Student Presentations 1 (Achen, Lavelle, and Lin)

Week 5

Tuesday, February 10

Topic: Student Presentations 2 (Lai, Gough, and Mu)

Week 6

Tuesday, February 17

Topic: Student Presentations 3 (Lei, Kwak, and Lu)

Week 7

Tuesday, February 24

Topic: [Winter break]

Week 8

Tuesday, March 3 [Completion of Research Proposal]

Detailed Proposal due on Monday, March 9, at noon.

Week 9

Tuesday, March 10

Topic: “Methodological Issues in Research Design”

Week 10

Tuesday, March 17

Topic: Student Presentations and Critiques 1

(Achen, Lavelle, and Lin), commented by (Lei, Kwak, and Liu)

Week 11

Tuesday, March 24

Topic: Student Presentations and Critiques 2

(Lai, Gough, and Mu) commented by (Achen, Lavelle, and Lin)

Week 12

Tuesday, March 31

Topic: Student Presentations and Critiques 3

(Lei, Kwak, and Liu), commented by (Lai, Gough, and Mu)

Week 13

Wednesday, April 8

Topic: [QMP Seminar]

Week 14

Topic: [Completion of Research Paper]

Week 15

April 23-24 (3-6) Formal Presentation of Student Papers

April 23 (3-6): Achen, Lavelle, Lin, and Lai

April 24 (3-6): Gough, Mu, Lei, and Kwak

Research paper is due on April 27 Monday, at noon.