Statistical Methods for Develo

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Juris Doctor

This is the first course in the three-course quantitative methods sequence. The sequence is designed to increase understanding of empirical analyses — both as a producer of such analyses and as a consumer of empirical analyses as an input to development policy decisions. This course introduces students to descriptive and inferential statistics often used in international development policy research. The course aims to provide students with a solid foundation for analyzing data, conveying analyses in convincing and appropriate ways. Topics covered include: measures of central tendency and dispersion, probability and probability distributions, random variables, hypothesis testing and confidence intervals, statistical power, correlation, simple regression, and an introduction to multivariate regression. The course includes a final project on which students work together in small groups applying the methods learned throughout the semester to work with an actual database to inform a policy memorandum. Students learn advanced Excel programming and Stata (a statistical software application) as tools used to conduct data analysis.