This course aims to strengthen students’ quantitative and qualitative research skills. Students will learn how to conduct quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Students will learn research design, data collection, mixed-methods data analysis skills, and strategies for reporting data. Students will then apply these skills to develop a pilot research project or a research proposal that interests them. Throughout this process, this course will help students identify and respond to possible ethical concerns that arise when conducting research. Students will have the opportunity to practice their skills with open source and practice-data sets that do not violate ethical or Institutional Review Board (IRB) procedures. If students want to have individuals at UC Berkeley involved in their research project (e.g. students, supervisors, and educators), they must obtain informed and written consent. Students are allowed to miss a maximum of 2 classes.

Students will learn statistics while simultaneously studying a research question of their choice. By the end of this course, students will be able to:
1. Design a research study
2. Identify ethical research practices
3. Develop a research proposal and question
4. Determine effective methodology and methods to answer a research question
5. Use Stata to run parametric and non-parametric statistical analyses (e.g., correlations, t-tests, rank sum tests)
6. Engage in inductive and deductive qualitative data analysis
7. Collect, analyze, and report data to an academic community

Students will be evaluated based on the following percentages: 20% of the grade will be based on attendance and participation, 40% will be based on the final project and paper, 30% will be based on 6 reflection & application assignments and 10% will be based on completion of the final presentation.