Methods of Communication Research and Statistics
Online Workbook

Welcome to the online workbook for the Methods of Communication Research and Statistics course, which you can use to learn about statistics at an academic level and how to use the SPSS software package for statistics. Please read this introduction carefully!

Structure

The aim of this workbook is for you to practise the material from the B-lectures through various exercises. It is very important to keep practising at home! The exam, amongst others, consists of assignments similar to those in this workbook and you will take the test using a computer.

Level of difficulty

The exercises for each subject are listed in order of level of difficulty. There are also clickable hints that explain the most important aspects of the assignment in more detail. The final exercises per subject are usually more open-ended and contain fewer hints. You can expect to see this type of question in the practical test.

Exercises

When you click on an exercise, it will open in the main screen. Exercises always contain a text with a brief introduction and several questions. They usually contain hints that you can use to help you answer the questions. When you click the green button the correct answer will be displayed. You should always read the explanation of the correct answer (that is often provided). Beneath almost every exercise are a number of hints on where you can find commands in SPSS, and on how you should give your interpretations. Do not forget to read these when doing your exercises! For the calculation exercises, the answer will be given straight away.

Data

In order to do an exercise, you usually need a database, a link to which is always provided. When you click on the name of the file, a window may appear in which you must indicate whether you wish to save the database or open it straight away. Select the latter option, and you will see that SPSS launches automatically and is already populated with the data that you must analyse. You can therefore start immediately.

Self-tuition

During the practical training sessions you will work on additional exercises. Use the exercises from the online workbook to practice your statistics and SPSS skills at home/after the training sessions. You can work on them on any computer with an internet connection. The computer must have SPSS 22.0 or higher installed on it (standard on every UvA computer). Students can buy the SPSS statistics package cheaply from Surfspot (Note: You can change the language of the website to English).