Learning objectives week 4:

• understand what reliability and validity of data are
  
• understand basic descriptive statistics of single variables
• understand the process of standardisation of variables
• learn how to enter data, and good practice in data set building

Lecture (Validity, Reliability and Exploration of Single Variables):

• Homework week 4:
  • Read at least one of the items from the list of required reading.
• Required reading week 4:
  • Agresti, A. and B. Finlay (2008) Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences, 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Chapter 3.2.-3.4
    
  • Bryman, A. (2008) Social Research Methods, 4th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 168-174
    
  • Diamond, Ian and Jefferies, Julie. 2000. Beginning Statistics: An Introduction for Social Scientists. Sage. Chapters 4 and 5
    
  • Lomax, Richard G. and Debbie L. Hahs-Vaughn. 2012. An Introduction to Statistical Concepts, 3rd edition. Routledge. Chapter 3
    

Seminar (Building our Data Set):

• Homework week 4:
  • Read the required literature below.
• Required reading week 4:
  
  • Acock, Alan C. 2014. A Gentle Introduction to Stata, Fourth Edition, Stata Press. Chapter 4.
    

Recommended reading for week 4:

• Brians, Craig L., Lars Wilnat, Jarol B. Manheim and Richard C. Rich. 2010. Empirical Political Analysis. Pearson. Chapter 16
  
• Hamilton, Lawrence. 2008. Statistics with Stata - International Edition. Stata Press