Looking back on this semester, the best way to summarize the takeaways of IS301 Intro to Computer Analysis is gaining a better understanding for data collection and analysis. We began the semester by looking at the basic definitions for a research study. We studied Thyne’s book, Political Analysis for the Rest of Us, and had to identify variables, hypotheses and null hypotheses, theories, research methods, resources utilized, and conclusions in already published works to identify these definitions outside of the textbook. We reviewed specific rules on how to construct causal theories which would be later implemented in our research project. We then progressed to developing hypotheses from the construction of theories which required more simplified definitions of what we wanted to study in the project. We also discussed different methods of analysis to use in our studies and ways to compare variables and identifying statistical significance.
After obtaining a basis of political science analysis and research, the class shifted gears in learning how to use IBM’s SPSS program for political analysis. Pollock began by demonstrating how to download the program and editing data. After gaining a basis for how SPSS works, we actually began running tests and comparing variables in problems on the worksheets in the back of each chapter. This practice really reinforced the concepts and made it easier to learn how to analyze political and social research. We learned how to interpret measures of central tendency and variation, the different types of variables, and how to interpret different case summaries. After this introduction, we practiced recoding, binning, and computing. We learned how to do both cross-tabulation analysis and mean comparison analysis along with graphing various relationships into a line, bar, and pie chart and even box plots. We learned how to utilize control variables and their significance in a given analysis. Sample means were significant in making conclusions in the worksheets through one-sample T tests and independent-samples T test in order to compare relationships between variables and make generalizations. We dove into measures of association and statistical significance by defining chi-square and correlation and putting them into practice. Bivariate Regression, scatterplots, regression, and interaction effects were later practiced once we became more comfortable with the software. Pollock’s book on SPSS concluded with application to political analysis scenarios and placing all we learned throughout the semester into context. Overall, SPSS was good practice in this course but I don’t think I would have been very successful with conducting political analyses on my own for the project without my group, Prof. Sanborn, and Pollock’s walkthrough on how to work the software.
I was fully expecting this class to be statistics-based and out of reach regarding my comprehension and liking. But throughout the semester I gained a betting appreciation for the research practices and statistical analysis that goes into political science. One must do groundwork before concluding any type of theory and generalization. I realized this the most when we began conducting surveys for the research project; I never fully understood all the time and effort that goes into putting in data and finding the best way to compare variables. The amount of times I had to go back into SPSS to find the best way to verify our hypothesis, which ended up being statistically insignificant, was innumerable.
My favorite thing that I learned in this course would be the different tests to run on SPSS so you don’t have to compute correlation, regression, mean, median, standard deviation, and other measures on your own. I always hated statistics in high school and even during my first year here because in those classes you had to memorize all the equations in order to conduct any sort of data analysis. With SPSS, all you have to do is plug in the numbers and it does everything else for you. It is definitely IS Major-dummy proof.
My least favorite thing that I learned in this course would have to be the application of all that we went over this semester to our own data analysis. I guess I didn’t like it much because I wasn’t too confident on my knowledge of these skills, therefore making the research project very difficult to figure out.
All of this being said, this was only wetting my feet in data analysis, for I would be lost in the dark without Prof. Sanborn walking us through worksheets or if I didn’t have Pollock’s SPSS Companion to Political Analysis to reference when analyzing our surveys. This course definitely taught me different ways of data analysis but I would require a more in-depth course with individual work with SPSS in order to fully develop these technological skills to apply in political science during my education and even beyond in the work force.