1. NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF ALLIED HEALTH AND NURSING
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SCIENCE
DHS 8010 Statistics and Research Methods (4 semester hours)
CRN 10216
INSTRUCTOR: Sarah Ransdell, Ph.D.,
(954) 262-1208, 800-356-0026, ext.21208
e-mail: ransdell@nova.edu
(Please use email through WebCT before
calling to set up phone times.)
Online hours: By appointment
You will meet Dr. Ransdell at the Summer Institute, July 13 through 17 in
Orlando, Florida. Please bring your laptop with SPSS and your other materials.
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Good decision-making in healthcare is enhanced through empiricism,
where formal processes are used to ask pertinent research questions, review the
professional contributions of others, develop appropriate methodologies, obtain
reliable and valid data, organize data into formal data sets, conduct suitable
statistical analyses, and make informed judgments. This course (DHS 8010)
provides background in both theory and practice in statistics and research
methods, in part to prepare students for the many activities associated with the
internship, practicum and the Doctoral Objective Analysis.
The DHSc program challenges the student to examine the current state of
health care, and to consider their role in the provision of services to their patients,
clients, and the community at large (see also http://www.nova.edu/dhs/). DHS
8010 is designed to support the examination of state of the art research.
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
Upon successful completion of this course, each student will be able to:
1. Describe and critique graphs and numerical summaries of data.
2. Select the appropriate measures to use for a particular data set.
3. Understand basic measures of central tendency and variability.
4. Apply inferential statistical techniques to decision-making.
5. Demonstrate the ability to apply and explain statistical applications.
6. Discuss models and inference underlying observational studies.
7. Use statistical reasoning to formulate research questions in quantitative terms.
REQUIRED MATERIAL:
Statistics for People Who (Think They ) Hate Statistics, (2008), 3rd
Edition, by Salkind, N. J., LA: Sage Publications. Please purchase the text as a
bundle that includes a license for SPSS Student Version 15 (ISBN:
978-1-4129-5151-7, paper w/cd). You may also use a Graduate or
Professional version of the sofware and it can be version 17. Order the
textbook and software bundle as early as possible so that you can bring a
working copy of SPSS on your laptop to Summer Institute. You do not
have to bring a laptop, but if you have one and it is where you will be
loading SPSS, then bring it along. You may also like to purchase

2. Discovering Statistics using SPSS (2009), 3rd edition by Field, A., LA: Sage
Publications. Your copy of SPSS will need to be either PC or Mac.
THE SECRET TO SUCCESS IN THIS COURSE
The key to doing well is reading the Salkind chapters (and the Field if you decide
to get this SPSS book), completing EVERY homework problem assigned, and
turning in EVERY assignment when it is due. Not only will obsessive attention to
the homework help you as you learn SPSS, it will help you on the quizzes. I am
happy to help you as you work through the homework questions. Do NOT,
however, wait to ask questions about the homework until the day that the
homework is due. Because homework is such a crucial part of the class, and
because it is so important to keep up with the homework, no late homework
assignments will be accepted , except under extraordinary circumstances.
For every homework problem that involves an output from SPSS, you must turn
in the SPSS output with your homework assignment. You can cut and paste
output in SPSS into a Word document to submit through the drop box. Save the
file with your name in it.
Making the Most of Summer Institute
Bring a working copy of SPSS on your laptop to the Summer Institute if you can.
Read the first 6 chapters in Salkind before you get to Orlando. Bring questions
about them. Bring potential articles to review during the Institute (on any topic
you like). We will go over the first chapters, how they are related to Health
Science research, and how SPSS can be a useful tool for interpreting research
results. We will work with SPSS on our laptops and overhead projection and we
will meet in small groups to discuss the articles that you bring.
GRADES
Each Chapter Discussion Question is worth 1 point (15 DQs total). 15
Each Homework is worth 5 points (15 HWs total). 75
The Final Article Review is worth 10 points. 10
100
There is also extra credit available. Each student will receive 5 points for
volunteering for 1.5 hours of research participation. If you don’t want to be a
research participant, you can write a 2 page review of a journal article.
COURSE CALENDAR
Date Topics Assignment Due
Week of July 6 Welcome! Chs1-6, AppA& Ch 1&
Online due July 12 Get Ready for Summer Institute &2 HWs,Ch1&2 DQs
July 13 in Orlando Data entry & central tendency Bring laptop with
8am to noon Chapter 2 SPSS, bring articles
July 14 in Orlando Frequency distributions & variability Ch3 DQs
8am to noon Chapter 3 HWCh3-due 7/15
July 15 in Orlando Presenting data in graphic form Ch4 DQs
8am to noon Chapter 4 HWCh4-7/16 8am

3. July 16 in Orlando Correlations Ch5 DQs,
8am to noon Chapter 5 HWCh5-7/17 8am
July 17 in Orlando Reliability and Validity Ch6 DQs
8am to noon Chapter 6 HWCh6-7/19 9pm
Week of July 20 Hypothesis Testing Read Ch7, Ch7 DQs
Online HWCh7-7/26
Week of July 27 Normal Distributions and z-scores Read Ch8, Ch8 DQs
Online HWCh8-8/2
Week of Aug 3 Inferential Statistics Read Ch9, Ch9 DQs
Online HWCh9-8/9
Week of Aug 10 Independent samples t-tests Ch10, Ch10 DQs
Online HWCh10-8/16
Week of Aug 17 Dependent samples t-tests Ch11, Ch11 DQs
Online HWCh11-8/23
Week of Aug 24 ANOVA Ch12, Ch12 DQs
Online HWCh12-8/30
Week of Aug 31 Nonparametric statistics Ch16, Ch16 DQs
Online HWCh16-9/6
Week of Sept 7 Internet sites for statistics Ch19, Ch19 DQs
Online HWCh19-9/13
Week of Sept 14 The 10 commandments Ch20, Ch20 DQs
Online of data collection HWCh20-9/20
Week of Sept 21 Final Exam Due 9/27 9pm
Online
Note: Written assignments are due to the Assignment Dropbox by 9pm Eastern
on the Sunday evening of the week that they are assigned. So for example, Ch1
& 2 DQs & HWs, are due to the drop box by 9pm Eastern on July 12. During SI,
the DQ and HW for each chapter will be due by 8am the day after it is covered in
class. Ch6 will be due by July 19th upon your return.