Module 6: Reflective Essay

Prepare a Reflective Essay in which you address each of the following items:

Describe how you improved your knowledge, skills, abilities, and yourself in this session through this course.
Evaluate the work you did during the session for the class and explain ways you could have performed better.
Identify topics you did not understand or successfully implement and suggest how to improve the course material on those topics.
Identify ways to measure the future effects of what you have learned in this course or your future progress/improvement.
State whether you achieved the course outcomes

This course introduces Ph.D. students to the analysis of the behavioral research data that will underlie much of the content in the program, as well as their own research efforts culminating in the dissertation. Starting with the basic definitions of data and data distributions and the concept of variance in the interval and ordinal variables and leading through concepts of randomness and probability of behavioral phenomena, students gain practice in defining well-formed research questions and hypotheses, assessing relationships between two variables including regression and correlation and contingency tables. The course concludes with a basic introduction to research design, emphasizing strong and weak inferences of causality and the distinction between experimental methods, quasi-experimentation, and non-experimental research. Students will be introduced to SPSS throughout this course.