Making Sense of Data in the Media (FutureLearn)

On this course from the Sheffield Methods Institute at University of Sheffield, we’ll look at ways of cutting through the confusion to decide what numbers reveal, when and why they (sometimes deliberately) mislead, and determine what is ‘fake news.’

What topics will you cover?

- Recognising the ‘size’ of numbers that are reported in the media.

- How change and risk are reported.

- How social statistics are created, paying particular attention to survey data.

- What we can learn from census categories.

- The different ways that surveys can be conducted and the impact that different formats can have on the results.

- How to draw a representative sample from a population.

- Sources of measurement error in surveys.

- Measuring sensitive or difficult subjects.

- Checking whether data is trustworthy by reviewing the methodology.

- How to calculate the Margin of Sampling Error (MoSE).

- The difference between correlation and causation.

- Where to find existing sources of data.

- How to develop a quantitative research project.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you'll be able to...

- Become a critical consumer of data in the media.

- Explain how social statistics are created.

- Evaluate data to make informed decisions about which results to trust.

- Design a quantitative research project.