Cursos / 2º Ciclo / Faculty of Law :: Criminology

MÉTODOS QUANTITATIVOS - 2016/2017

2º curricular year
Semestralidade: 1st semester
ECTS: 7.5

Teachers

Leading Teacher: Prof. Doutora Olga Cunha
Assistant Professor: Prof. Doutora Olga Cunha

Class type and School hours

Teórico-prática : 1 Horas

Teaching Language

Portuguese

Main Aims/Objectives

The course "Quantitative Methods" has as general objective to equip the students with framed and sustained theoretical knowledge (to know-to know) and with practical and critical skills about quantitative research (to know-to do), in social sciences in general and Criminology and its objects of study in specific.

Specific Aims/Objectives

It is intended that the students contact with the concepts and basic techniques of quantitative research, to be able to apply them to concrete objects, according to their potentialities, through an exercise of operationalization of a quantitative study, which includes the definition of who and how to ask (presenting the possible types of samples and the technique of data collection) and the data analysis using SPSS.

Skills to be acquired

To know the basic concepts: variables; internal and external validity; measurement scales; numerical and graphical methods of data description; types of hypothesis and error; sample types. To build questionnaires, identifying strengths and limitations of this technique. To explore SPSS: to create databases and to introduce data; to apply descriptive statistics; to select the appropriate statistics to explore relationships and differences between groups.

Teaching Procedures

The teaching methodology will be based on theoretical and practical classes with theoretical exposition relating to the basic theoretical statistic and methodological concepts, through a participatory and interrogative methodology to maintain the active involvement of the students in the learning process followed by practical implementation of learning in exemplification exercises of quantitative research phases applied to the specific context of Criminology.

Programme

I. Methodological issues and framing
1. Introduction to statistical and conceptual issues
1.1. Research and measurement in social sciences
1.2. Variables: dependent, independent and intervening
1.3. Hypotheses: choice, test, statistical significance and error types
1.4. Validity of studies: internal and external
1.5. Measures
1.5.1. Numerical continuous, discrete and dichotomous
1.5.2. Nominal, ordinal, scale and ratio
1.6. Data Description
1.6.1. Numerical methods of description of ordinal data, scale and ratio: 1.6.1.1. Measures of central tendency
1.6.1.2. Measures of dispersion
1.6.2. Numerical methods of description of nominal data
1.6.3. Graphical methods
1.7. Data distributions:
1.7.1. Normal
1.7.2. Asymmetric (positive and negative)
1.7.3. Kurtosis

II. Methodological issues of data collection
2. Who inquire – the participants:
2.1. Population and sample types
2.2. Biases in selection
2.3. Sample size and representativeness
2.4 Access to the most difficult populations - the method of snow-ball
3. How to inquire - the survey method and the questionnaire
3.1. Types of administration and objectives
3.2. Main error causes
3.3. Format of questions: open and closed - objectives, characteristics of respondents, results analysis and presentation; format of dichotomous items with numeric scales and referenced scales
3.4. Formulation of questions
3.5. Advantages and limitations
4. Ethical issues and drafting of the final product

III. Treatment and analysis of the data using SPSS
5. General Exploration SPSS: basic operations
5.1. Creation of data bases
5.2. Data entry
6. Descriptive statistics
7. Inferential statistics - Choice of appropriate statistics:
7.1. Exploring relations in SPSS: Pearson correlation
7.2. Exploring differences in SPSS: Student´s t test
7.3. Factorial analysis

Evaluation Type

Continuous assessment will take into account the classes attendance and will address the following elements: two written exercises, frequency and final exam (when necessary).

Teaching Resources

Video projector to display the essential concepts to the students, as well as the application of examples and specific procedures. The students must solve the exercises using the computer equipment in the classroom.

Sustainability Objectives

Keywords

Quantitative research; treatment and analysis of quantitative data; SPSS; questionnaire.

Main Bibliography

Complementary Bibliography