Fall 2014 - 62864 - PA397C - Advanced Empirical Methods for Policy Analysis

This course is intended to provide students with essential statistical reasoning skills that will prepare them for more advanced empirical methods courses, as well as to impart basic programming skills with statistical software.  Topics that will be covered include basic descriptive and inferential statistics, including population and sample distributions, hypothesis testing, contingency tables and more; basic concepts of bivariate and multiple regression, and an introduction to the generalized linear model.  The textbook for the course, Applied Statistics for the Social and Health Sciences, incorporates statistical training and lessons in Stata and SAS, and the lectures and assignments will include the basics of programming with statistical packages.  This course will emphasize the application of statistical reasoning in conducting research, consuming research and policy analysis and decision making.