„Introduction to quantitative methods and statistical literacy in applied linguistics research” by prof. Shawn Loewen, 14.10, godz. 11:30, Aula Heliodori

Knowledge of quantitative research methods and statistics is important for graduate students both as consumers and potential producers of quantitative research (Gass et al., 2020). However, research has shown that many graduate students and academic faculty in applied linguistics do not have high levels of statistical knowledge (Loewen et al., 2014).

The current talk is designed to introduce basic and common statistical concepts in the field of applied linguistics, focusing specifically on conceptual understanding of these statistical procedures. We will begin with a basic review of the importance of descriptive statistics, including means, standard deviations, and 95% confidence intervals (Norris, 2015). We will also explore analysis of variance (anova), which is the most common inferential statistic in our field. The talk will also emphasize the importance data visualization, using data rich graphics (Larson-Hall, 2017). Finally, we will address a common statistical limitation in our field, namely small sample sizes (Loewen & Hui, 2021).