UKB 597 - Scientific Research Methods

This is a practical course on scholarly methods designed to enable students to carry out their own research projects. The emphasis is on quantitative research methods. Topics covered include the philosophy of research. The course also focuses on the ethics of carrying out primary and secondary research. This course is designed to: a) describe the key components of social research, b) develop skills and knowledge about quantitative social research, and c) identify criteria used to evaluate the quality of social research.

By the end of the course, the students should be able to:

•  make literature review and use data sources,
•  formulate research questions,
•  define a research strategy and design a research project to answer a research question,
•  discuss the practice and principles of social research,
•  evaluate the existing research, write up and disseminate the findings.

The course focuses on the philosophy of research, ethics of carrying out primary and secondary research, and describes the key components of social research, develops skills and knowledge required for quantitative social research, and defines criteria used to evaluate the quality of social research. Microsoft Excel,  Stata, Eviews ve R applications shall be used to obtain descriptive statistics, correlation matrix, and simple regression analysis. The quantitative analysis will be conducted using secondary data.