PTH 5132 - Critical Inquiry

This video focuses on effective ways to understand and organize data using descriptive statistics. Analyzing data collected from studies of young music students, the video helps viewers sort through basic data-interpretation concepts: measures of central tendency, levels of measurement, measures of dispersion, and graphs. A wide range of organization principles are covered, including mode, median, and mean; discrete and continuous data; nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio data; standard deviation; and normal distribution.

A dream may be the most difficult human experience to quantify—but dreaming is an excellent topic for building qualitative research skills. This program illustrates experiments, designed and conducted by students, that revolve around sleep and dreams. In the process, it provides thorough insight into the issues relevant to collecting and utilizing qualitative data. Viewers are shown how to create effective questionnaires, prepare participant interviews, assemble case studies, and conduct observational studies. The program also covers the use of content analysis and explores the correlational method, employed to make qualitative data more meaningful.