College of Graduate Studies

Statistical Support

The statistical support office provides a statistical consultation service to all registered postgraduate students. The service is meant to provide guidance on selection and utilisation of appropriate methods for collection and statistical analysis of data.

The support provided by the office covers all phases of the research:

Research design phase

  • Provide guidance on appropriate research design to address the research questions of the project/study.
  • Double check if the planned procedures and methods and the sample size will be sufficient to address the objectives project/study.
  • Recommend appropriate sample selection strategy.
  • Determine the minimums ample units necessary to address the study objectives.
  • Provide guidance on appropriate data collection strategy.
  • Review quantitative data collection instruments.
  • Review data analysis plan.

Data collection phase

  • Review quantitative data collection instrument if not already done at research design phase.
  • Check that all the variables of interest in the study are correctly measured.
  • Ensure that the data collection instrument is designed to enhance data management

Data capturing

  • Ensure that data is captured in a manner that facilities data analysis.
  • Ensure that data is captured to facilitate data analyses that will address research objectives

Data analysis

  • Provide guidance on implementation of data analysis methods that are appropriate for the data collected and are efficient to address the research objectives.
  • Provide guidance regarding appropriate interpretation and presentation of results.

 

It is recommended that the statistician is consulted from the research design stage of a project.

“To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post-mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of”. Ronald Fisher

Workshops

The statistical support office offers the following workshops:

  • Basic to advanced statistics workshops.
    • Quantitative research designs and techniques
    • Questionnaire design
    • Introduction to Statistics
    • Bivariate data analysis (Parametric tests)
    • Bivariate data analysis (Nonparametric tests) 
  • Practical SPSS workshops to equip students with practical skills to perform statistical data analysis on their own.
    • Data analysis in SPSS (Univariate and bivariate data analysis -parametric tests)
    • Data analysis in SPSS (Univariate and bivariate data analysis -nonparametric tests)

For Consultation click here to download form

Contact

masonpl@unisa.ac.za 

Last modified: 2021/10/14