Diverse Views on Analysis (with student comments in quotes)

For another, it offers students a well-rounded view of many different perspectives on quantitative modeling

"I think this class helps us to examine what we take as fact and what we are told is true. We might be told that, in general as researchers, 'you'll be doing this ANOVA or looking at this topic through this exclusive lens,' but I think by learning about data modelling, we are learning why we should try new things and why we should go beyond what are the normal analyses of the literature in this field."

"This class does a good job equipping me to potentially explore more situations that could be modeled."

"When presented with a lot of information, it is essential to decipher what is exciting and how we could learn from the data. This class has made me change my mindset to figure out how to be efficiently curious (in other words, how to ask productive questions) and then also gaining the toolset to answer those questions."

"It has been interesting to see how the same dataset may allow us to implement so many different analyses, each which could answer a very different type of question and may require us to explore the data in a different way. On a related note, I think that learning ways to explore data in a principled way has made me more curious about exploring datasets instead of skipping straight to the test results I would like to see. Our own personal projects, because they were so open ended in what we wanted to look at and how we wanted to do it, definitely encouraged curiosity."

In that context, students get to see me and my work in a very personal way, allowing me a rare chance to get their feedback and thoughts on things I typically have to leave for my lab. I get to come very clean and be very clear about disclaiming to students my own perspectives and biases as a scholar in a way that other classes neither need nor allow.

It is a rare place where I get to bring students through all the background that gives them (in one semester) basically everything they need to know to see what I've frittered years away trying to build. And in the very likely case I'm absolutely incorrect about most of what I do, then the students at least have put only a semester into it and learned many valuable things along the way.

It's not that I have to hide who I am in my other classes, but Intro and Research Methods are where I can open the Psych Department doors to as many people as possible, and this Longitudinal & Time Series class is more so a place where we can initiate students into cutting-edge controversies and literature that need the wider foundation from the gateway courses.

Back to What you Learn, back to Longitudinal & Time Series Analysis, or back to In the Classroom.