Kursthemen
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About the Empirical Research Methods I (ERM1)
This course introduces you to foundational knowledge and skills in empirical research methods which are essential to understand and evaluate scientific articles.
ERM1 provides the base for additional courses such as the compulsory course “Empirical Research Methods II: Experimentation in practice“, and the electives “Empirical Research Methods III: Process analysis” and “Empirical Research Methods IV: Eye tracking”.
The seminar also provides some essential knowledge that you will need for your their Master’s Thesis, namely for preparing your research study, analyzing the obtained data, and reporting it.
To see an overview of some of the tests covered on this course, please check the file “Overview tests ERM2 2020”.
Course structure
- Topic of the week presentations:
- Every week, one (or several) course participants will give a short presentation on the topic of the week. Your presentation should not last longer than 20 minutes.
- An overview on the most important aspects of each topic of the week you should include can be found in the file “ERM1 Overview of Weekly Presentation Topics” located on this page.
- The topic of the week presentation will be discussed beforehand with your tutors. Please send your presentation two weeks before the seminar to the tutors, and they will give you feedback and the chance to revise the presentation. A revised version needs to be sent to the tutors one week before presentation. For some presentations, these 1 and 2 week deadlines will be reduced.
- After your presentation, share a copy of your topic of the week presentation to the seminar instructor so it can be included in the moodle and be available to the course participants.
- Deepening our understanding:
- After the presentation on the topic of the week, we will clarify your questions, contribute more content if needed, discuss, and do small additional exercises.
- Exercise sheets:
- The exercise sheets will be completed individually as preparation for the seminar. Don't forget to submit your Excel/ SPSS files (or screenshots) if they were needed to complete the task.
- The sheets will be graded by the tutors. Regular submission and at least 50% of the points are required to be accepted to take part in the final exam. Deadline for submitting your sheets is Mondays at 23:59.
- Exercise sheets will be submitted here on moodle. Remember to add your last name in square brackets at the beginning of each file you submit. Example: “[Rejon] 2020 - Exercise sheet 1 Introduction, basic concepts.pdf”
- In the tutorial, you will have the chance to discuss the exercise sheets.
- Read the “ERM1 Exercise Sheets How To” file to learn about more about the conditions and characteristics of the exercise sheets.
- Online resources:
- Presentations and discussions will be held on the “Empirical Research Methods 1 WiSe 20-21” Team on Microsoft Teams. For more information, check the section "Tools".
- We provide online resources for each topic in this moodle. Please work through them to prepare for the seminars.
- If you find additional resources that you would like to share, please share them in the “Empirical Research Methods 1 WiSe 20-21” Team.
Tools
Three digital tools will be used throughout the course:
- Moodle: The moodle page of the ERM1 course where this information is located. Here you will find all the resources for the seminar. Here you will also upload the completed worksheets.
- Microsoft Teams: The Team “Empirical Research Methods 1 WiSe 20-21” on Microsoft Teams will be the place where the weekly seminar and tutorial sessions will be scheduled and take place. Here you can also communicate with all course attendants to ask questions, share ideas, and discuss. You can self-join the Team using the code: e77euer
- SPSS: The statistical software program that will be used for the topics about statistics. SPSS only runs on Windows or Mac so you must have a desktop or a laptop. Tutors will support you with the installation and setup of the SPSS.
Exam requirements
In order to write the final exam and pass the course, the following is required:
- Submitting your presentation draft in time (usually two weeks in advance) and giving the presentation
- Overall, at least 50% of the points in the exercise sheets
- Registering for the exam in LSF
Statistical software
In the course, we will be working with software for statistical analysis. One very common one is SPSS. SPSS is also used in the research activities of our department. Saarland University provides SPSS licenses for their students, so that you can use the program for free (Netzwerklizenz für Studierende). Of course, you are free to use other programs, e.g. PSPP, R, Stata... However, in the seminar and in the exam, we will be working with SPSS. It is recommended to install the program of your choice early on so that it is ready to be used once we need it in class. The tutors will support you with the installation and set-up of SPSS.
Additional links
- Example data set that you can use to practice SPSS (scroll down the page and download "Beispieldatensatz")
Schedule
- Seminar: Only first session: Tuesday November 3 from 10:15-11:45. Second session onwards: every Monday from 10:15-11:45
- Tutorial: Wednesday 10:15-11:45, starting from November 4, 2020
A detailed schedule of each session including the topic and topic presenter(s) will be added here as an attachment file after the first session.
Other
You can find a diagram about the tests covered in the course in the attachment to this page. In general, we cannot cover all of the existing statistical tests in this seminar, but are only discussing a selection of the most commonly used ones. If none of these tests is applicable to your data / research question, please look up alternatives. Once you are familiar with the basic idea of statistical hypothesis testing, it should be fairly easy to identify and use new tests as well.
Contact
Miguel Rejón
m.rejon@edutech.uni-saarland.de
Building C54, Room 1.14
Tutors:
Heidi Hesham Sayed El Kheshen: s8heelkh@stud.uni-saarland.de
Md. Abdullah Al Mamun: s8amamun@stud.uni-saarland.de-
Timetable with the dates of all sessions: topics to be presented, seminar dates, tutorial dates, draft deadlines, worksheet deadlines
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List of subtopics that must be covered on your presentations
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- Topic of the week presentations:
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3.1 Quality criteria, structure, and content of scientific texts; 3.2 Standardized questionnaires and construction of a new questionnaire
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