| Syllabus | Schedule | General Social Survey |
| Survey Documentation and Analysis | Inter-University Consortium for Political & Social Research | |
| General Social Survey Codebooks |
This course is required for students minoring in Sociology; it is also the first course in a two-course sequence required of Sociology and Criminology majors. The other course in the sequence is Sociology 3155: Advanced Quantitative Research Methods and Analysis (also 4 credits). Ideally both these courses should be taken in your sophomore year, although sometimes a later decision about the choice of your major moves them to a later semester. A mathematical way of thinking is certainly an asset in completing these courses, but there are no mathematical procedures involved in the course beyond the most elementary algebra, and in fact, most of the mathematical work will be done by a statistical package called SPSS. My experience is that the great majority of students can be successful in this course and that many people who were not looking forward to anything involving statistics will be pleasantly surprised to find themselves enjoying the techniques and processes we will be learning here.
On the other hand, this is a demanding course. Auguste Comte, who coined the term "sociology," viewed sociology as the queen of the sciences. Certainly it's a complex subject matter, with some special challenges to scientific study, and you will need to make a substantial investment of your time and energy to do well in this course. For some of you, it may mean as much as two hours outside class for every hour in class. But for those who are majors in sociology or criminology, the time you invest now will really pay off in Sociology 3155, the next course in our methods and analysis sequence.