Quantitative methodology: An introduction

I’ve taught my last class for the semester and I thought I’d make available the booklet that I wrote for teaching my class on quantitative methodology. You can download it here.

It contains seven reading assignments (mostly empirical studies that serve as examples) and ten chapters with lectures:

1. Association and causality.
2. Constructing a control group.
3. Alternative explanations.
4. Inferential statistics 101. (The course is not a statistics course, but there’s no avoiding talking about p-values given their omnipresence.)
5. Increasing precision.
6. Pedagogical interventions.
7. Within-subjects experiments.
8. Quasi-experiments and correlational studies.
9. Constructs and indicators.
10. Questionable research practices.

I’ve also included two appendices:

• Reading difficult results sections.
• Reporting research transparently.

Hopefully some of you find it useful, and feel free to let me know what you think.