Research Methods

Science is the greatest process that humanity has for improving the world. From life saving medicine to the internet to predicting hurricanes to landing humans on the moon, science has led to humanity's greatest achievements. This course will teach you how that scientific process works, with details and examples of how and why each stage in the process should be performed.

While primarily focusing on social science, this course is applicable to many areas of study. It covers topics as diverse as ethics, statistics, experiments, and validity. It will empower you not only to continue on a path to conducting your own research, but also to be a good, responsible consumer of research performed by others. Unfortunately, the world is full of people who want to take advantage of you. Frequently, these bad actors utilize pseudoscience to try and get people to believe things that just aren't true. This course will give you the skills to be able to recognize those false and misleading claims. It is a beneficial area of study, even if you never intend to conduct research yourself!

Lectures in this course:

Introduction

Logical Errors

Types of Research

Research Questions

Ethics

Conceptualization

Operationalization

Data and Variables

Sampling

Sampling Methods

True Experiments

Quasi Experiments

Validity

Surveys

Survey Options and Problems

Qualitative Research

Qualitative Methods

Secondary Data

Evaluation Research

Data Analysis

Regression

Papers

Citations (APA)