POLS6123: Quantitative Methods for FEMP

This course builds upon previous graduate and undergraduate method courses in fire and emergency management. Emphasis on descriptive, inferential, and non-parametric statistics for use in analyzing data relevant to the several disciplines.

• POLS 5013 (Quantitative Methods of Political Analysis), or equivalent.

As POLS5013 is a prerequisite, it is assumed that every student has been exposed to all of the topics in the course. Furthermore, note that POLS5013 is not the same as POLS5103, nor is it acceptable as a prerequisite. A partial list of topics assumed known by the students in POLS6123 includes descriptive statistics, univariate statistics, correlation, means tests (including t-tests and ANOVA), chi-squared tests, and linear regression of one independent variable.

1. To identify challenges in quantitative methods specific to research in fire and emergency management.
2. To elaborate on ethical concerns in fire and emergency management research particularly conditions that involve crisis and/or homeland security.
3. To understand the value and limitations of descriptive statistics for quantitative research in fire and emergency management.
4. To identify appropriate applications of inferential statistics for analyzing fire and emergency management data.
5. To examine the use of non-parametric statistics within fire and emergency management research.
6. To develop a research paper for submission to a professional journal or conference.

• Do not forget to download the additional book for this course: R for Starters from here.
• Make sure you download and read both the course syllabus and the course style sheet.
• If you did receive the Preparation Survey, please download it and email it to the professor by Sunday, August 21.
• I have created a packet of four documents that should help with the paper for this course (from both a philosophical and a practical direction).