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Quantitative Research Methods Certificate

Program Faculty:

• James A. Dixon
• James A. Green
• Blair T. Johnson
• Bruce Kay
• David A. Kenny
• Vicki J. Magley
• Stephanie Milan
• Felicia Pratto
• David Weakliem

• James A. Dixon
• James A. Green (Coordinator for '07-'08 AY)
• David A. Kenny
• Vicki J. Magley
• Stephanie Milan

QRM admissions procedures

Program Description

The program in Quantitative Research Methods is a graduate certificate program administered by faculty in the Departments of Psychology and Sociology but drawing students from many other departments and schools.  The general structure and policies of this program follow the guidelines for graduate certificate programs specified in the University of Connecticut Graduate Catalogue. Enrollment in the program is open to graduate students in any of the six graduate programs in Psychology, and to graduate students from other Departments outside Psychology. The program's mission is to provide students with a thorough background in quantitative research methods in the psychological sciences that extends the basic research methods training required by their respective graduate programs. Participants who enroll in and successfully complete the program will receive a certificate in Quantitative Research Methods from the Graduate school of the University of Connecticut.

Program Requirements

The program requirements are as follows:

1. Prerequisite courses. Prerequisites for participation in the program are STAT 242 and STAT 379, or equivalent courses. Students who wish to substitute STAT 242 and/or 379 with an equivalent course need to submit a petition to the Executive Committee of the program (see above). The petition should include a syllabus of the equivalent course and other documentation if available (e.g., exam examples), to support the petition and facilitate the decision making by the Committee. Qualifying courses may be courses taken at other institutions.
2. Credits. Participants in the program complete 12 credits of graduate coursework in quantitative methods.  Nine credits are selected from a list of program courses (Table 1) and 3 credits are obtained by completing Psyc 301 (see below). Students who wish to petition for a course that is not listed may do so by submitting a petition with sufficient documentation of the content of the course to the Executive Committee (syllabus, exam examples). As a general rule, qualifying courses in this category will not be courses from other institutions and there will be no substitutions for Psyc 301.
3. Research paper. Participants in the program enroll in PSYC 301 ("Seminar in Quantitative Methods") for the duration of one semester. This course will be offered once a year, typically in the spring semester. Members of the program Executive Committee will teach this course on a rotating basis. This is a practicum seminar in which students will work on specific problems of data analysis, simulation, or statistical theory or methods. In this seminar, students will work on the research paper they have proposed in their initial plan of study. Students will present their project to the group, and students and faculty will bring in relevant literature, examples, or other expertise relevant to the projects. Projects can consist of creative or innovative secondary statistical analyses of existing data, simulations, or pure statistical papers. Any topic with a significant quantitative or research methods component that is in principle suitable for the journal Psychological Methods is acceptable as a class project. (There is no room for original data collection in this class.) The end product of the seminar will be an individual APA style paper reporting the project. The final manuscript will be in a form that is, in principle, ready for submission to a journal in psychology. APA formatting and Psychological Methods are the standards. The manuscript will be approved by the class instructor.  Two additional readers are selected; these readers may be other Program faculty (see listing on the Psychology Department Web site) or other qualified faculty if permitted by petition to the QRM Executive Committee. 
4. Plan of study. Students interested in the program should design an individualized plan of study, in consultation with their major advisor that serves their research needs, interests, and career goals. Students should consult with one or more members of the Executive Committee of the program (listed on the Psychology Department’s web site) about the courses they plan to take and their expected date of completion of Psyc 301 and the program.  Students should enroll officially by completing appropriate forms at the Graduate School.  A final plan of study, along with an approved Research Paper should be submitted to the Coordinator of the QRM Program prior to graduation
   

The QRM Plan of Study can be downloaded here.

Table 1 Qualifying Courses (2008 course numbers in parentheses, where known)

Note. Please also check graduate catalog, department websites, and instructors for course availability. Not all courses are available in each academic year.