PSY/SOC 314, Statistics, fulfills the Liberal Education Communications I requirement for students entering Whittier during or after fall 2005. As such, students entering Whittier during or after fall 2008 must have taken the Math Placement exam and placed beyond Math 76, or they must have successfully completed Math 76 before enrolling in PSY/SOC 314. Because this course is designed to provide the student with an understanding of, and competency in, the appropriate application of statistics to the behavioral sciences, algebra is an integral and necessary component of this course. Regardless of whether you ever actually conduct your own research in psychology or some other field, you will encounter statistics in your daily life as a consumer of research and as an informed citizen of whichever nation in which you reside. Finally, this course will provide you with an opportunity to learn to use computers to analyze data, employing the most commonly used behavioral statistics program, SPSS.
Introduces the neural, genetic, biochemical, and structural mechanisms that underlie normal and abnormal human behavior. Lecture, films, and visual aids. Prerequisite: 100. One semester, 3 credits.
The course is a seminar involving reading, discussion, and systematic written assignments designed to give experience in (a) conducting library searches, (b) evaluating research topics, (c) analyzing and integrating research, (d) presenting reviews orally and in writing, and (e) peer reviewing one another’s work. The assignments culminate in a major literature review paper and presentation. You must take PSYC 415 and PSYC 499 concurrently.