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Certificate of Achievement
has completed the following course:
Making Sense of Data in the Media
This course explored how social and economic statistics are created and the different ways this information can be presented by the media to tell particular stories. Learners discovered how to interpret this type of data and how to make informed decisions about which results to trust.
3 weeks, 3 hours per week
Mark Taylor
Lecturer in Quantitative Methods
The University of Sheffield
Transcript
Learning outcomes
- Become a critical consumer of data in the media.
- Explain how social statistics are created.
- Evaluate data to make informed decisions about which results to trust.
- Design a quantitative research project.
Syllabus
- Recognising the ‘size’ of numbers that are reported in the media.
- How change and risk are reported.
- How social statistics are created, paying particular attention to survey data.
- What we can learn from census categories.
- The different ways that surveys can be conducted and the impact that different formats can have on the results.
- How to draw a representative sample from a population.
- Sources of measurement error in surveys.
- Measuring sensitive or difficult subjects.
- Checking whether data is trustworthy by reviewing the methodology.
- How to calculate the Margin of Sampling Error (MoSE).
- The difference between correlation and causation.
- Where to find existing sources of data.
- How to develop a quantitative research project.
Issued on 9th January 2021
The person named on this certificate has completed the activities in the transcript above. For more information about Certificates of Achievement and the effort required to become eligible, visit futurelearn.com/proof-of-learning/certificate-of-achievement.
This certificate represents proof of learning. It is not a formal qualification, degree, or part of a degree.