Goals: While you have come to graduate school for many different reasons, chances are that we all share at least one goal: to improve our ability to discover and impart the truth. Scientific method is a time-tested method for discovering truth in spite of our all-too-human tendencies toward perceptual distortion and wishful thinking. If your career aims include reporting, teaching, advertising or public relations, you’ll find an application here.

Procedures: This course is hands-on. Please be sure that you are also enrolled in one of the Friday computer lab sessions (at 9 and 10 a.m.). You can also buy SPSS for your home computer from the Ram Shop in Student Stores at a steep discount ($200 for the Grad Pack) or a limited student version ($72). Cheaper still is SPSS for Students, which is just like the $200 version except that it costs $37 and locks itself up when the semester is over. It comes in Windows and Mac versions. I recommend the Grad Pack as a terrific long-term investment.

Grades: We use H, P and L instead of the A-F range as a way of reducing grade anxiety. H (for high) is for the rare case when class work is at a professional level demonstrating that you are ready for academic publishing. P (for pass) indicates fully satisfactory performance. L (for low pass) is a warning signal. An L in this course dooms you to repeat it. Too many Ls takes you out of the program. If you are in danger of getting one, you’ll know it.

Computer lab work 25%

Mid-term exam 20

Research paper 30

Final exam 20

The course will be organized around the following research question: is quality journalism a cost or a benefit to investors in media companies? A list of more than 30 possible research papers will be handed out on the first day of class but you are by no means confined to that list. Fresh ideas in this area are sorely needed. As we discuss the various research methodologies, we'll talk at the same time about how they can be applied to this central question.

Texts: Three are in the book store, one you can get there or online, and the fifth is available online only.

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Philip Meyer, The New Precision Journalism. This book is dated in some places, but I'll protect you from the author's obsolescence. There will be occasional handouts from the manuscript for the new edition, due out next year. It's also available in downloadable form on this website.

Earl Babbie, Fred Halley and Jeane Zaino, Adventures in Social Research: Data Analysis Using SPSS for Windows 95/98. This is a generic methods text. I like it for its readability and generous use of examples. The disk that comes with it contains a subset of the 1998 General Social Survey, done with personal interviews of a representative sample of Americans in April of that year. Save the disk for your own computer. If you get a used copy without a disk, don't worry. The data are on the J-School network and you can make your own copy..

Neil J. Salkind, Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics. SPSS also figures prominently in this book. Appendix A is a quick and easy introduction to the computer tools we’ll be using. Sometimes a statistical issue that is hard to understand from one author's point of view gets easier when you see another presentation.

David Boyle, The Sum of Our Discontent: Why Numbers Make Us Irrational. One of the hazards of this course is that getting numbers out of a computer is so easy and fun that it can causes delusions of supernormal power. When that starts to happen to you, read in this book until the feeling goes away.

Codebook of the General Social Survey. http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/gss/codebook.htm

When you get down to writing reports from the GSS data, you’ll need details such as the exact wording of the questions. This web site provides them.

Other useful books: The first on this list was written explicitly for journalists and might be helpful at clarifying concepts or in convincing yourself that the content of this course is relevant to journalism. The second is the world’s best how-to guide to doing your own poll. And the third is listed just because I thought you might like it.

Victor Cohn, News and Numbers: A Guide to Reporting Statistical Claims and Controversies in Health and Related Fields. 1989.

Don A. Dillman, Mail and Internet Surveys: The Tailored Design Method, 2d edition, 2000.

James Franklin: The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability before Pascal, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. A fun read if you become interested in the historical origins of scientific method.

Live Poll: This is our way of convincing you that research data do not come from the stork. Each of you will serve for one evening as an interviewer for our semi-annual telephone poll of North Carolina.

Special supplies: Bring a 3½-inch IBM formatted floppy disk to the lab sessions so that you can save your work and modify it elsewhere. It’s a good idea (but not required) to bring a pocket calculator to the lectures. It should be a scientific calculator, not a four-banger. Anything in the TI-30 series is fine (about $15).