Instructor: David Bills

e-mail: david-bills@uiowa.edu

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Course Objectives:

The motivation for this course is that educational researchers could do better research if they had clearer understandings of basic demographic concepts, techniques, and resources.  I have tried to design this course to be as practical as possible.  I’d like to move fairly quickly from some necessary theoretical and conceptual grounding in the field of demography to a usable bag of tricks.

We will spend a lot of time reading and discussing demographic research, with the goals of understanding why the researchers chose the methods and data that they did, how these methods work, and how we can replicate them.  We will read several expository articles on how to "do" demographic research, and will get our hands dirty as much and as often as we can.  By the end of the semester, you should be able to read at a reasonable level of comprehension research that uses demographic techniques and have begun to develop the ability to design and conduct your own demographic analyses.

The class will work in small groups on a few common projects that will permit us to examine researchable issues in education using a variety of demographic techniques.  As a class, we will develop one or more (depending on the size of the class) demographic research projects.

Please submit any paper assignment electronically as a Word attachment. Do not submit hard copies.  

Your grade will be based on your contribution to the group projects, the effort you put into preparing for class each week and a number of short written and oral assignments.

Finally, I want to run this class as much as possible as a seminar. For that to work, students need to come to class having read and thought about the material and prepared to discuss it and ask questions about it.  

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Required Textbooks:

You should purchase the following book from the Iowa Memorial Union Bookstore or online (e.g., through www.Amazon.com). There will also be a selection of required journal article readings (see below, under Required Article Readings).

Siegel, Jacob S. and David A. Swanson. 2004. The Methods and Materials of Demography, second edition. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

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Required Article Readings:

Readings:    Most of the readings are available on electronic reserve through the University of Iowa's Psychology Library. If readings are not on electronic reserve, then they are either directly linked to an Adobe PDF file or to an online journal article.

The following instructions explain how to access readings that are posted electronically via the University of Iowa's
Psychology Library (NOTE: you must have your student Hawk ID to access these):

• http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/psych

• This URL takes you to the Psychology Library’s home page.

• Click on RESERVE SERVICES.

• Click on ELECTRONIC RESERVE (at: http://libres.lib.uiowa.edu/psych/)

• Click on desired class (Bills' 07B:176).

• Download and print out readings.

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Other Recommended Books:

I strongly recommend the following books for anyone who would like a good overview of demography. Some are pretty technical, some less so. I haven't placed an order for them, but they should be easily available.  I haven't placed an order for them, but they should be easily available from either the Iowa Memorial Union Bookstore or online (e.g., through www.amazon.com):

Davis, H. Craig. 1995. Demographic Projection Techniques for Regions and Smaller Areas. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Frey, William R. 2004. Investigating Change in American Society: Exploring Social Trends with U.S. Census Data, second edition.  Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Petersen, William. 2000.  From Birth to Death: A Primer In Demography For The Twenty‑First Century. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Preston, Samuel H., Sam Preston, Patrick Heuveline, Michel Guillot, and Michelle Guillon. 2000. Demography: Measuring and Modeling Population Processes. London: Blackwell.

Siegel, Jacob S. 2002. Applied Demography: Applications to Business, Government, Law, and Public Policy. New York: Academic Press.

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Other Recommended Readings:

I have listed several recommended readings on the syllabus schedule (see below and the recommended readings link). I think many of these will be useful to you as you prepare your research projects, and I encourage you to pursue some of them.

As mentioned above, I want to run this class as much as possible as a seminar. For that to work, students need to come to class having read and thought about the material and prepared to discuss it and ask questions about it.  

If you do not have some facility with SPSS, I would strongly recommend taking a free short course from WEEG as early in the semester as possible. There are also dozens of books on how to use SPSS that are aimed at novice users. 

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Listserv / Distribution List:

So that I can set up a listserv and stay in contact with you over the semester, please email me soon after the first class session, so that I can capture your email address. You will receive many of your assignments and other course information via this listserv and are responsible for all material that is communicated over the listserv.

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Accommodations:

I would like to hear from anyone who has a disability that may require some modification of the seating, testing, or other class requirements so that appropriate arrangements may be made.  Please see me after class or during my office hours.

From this online syllabus, I have hyperlinked two short documents. These are "Policy on Student Academic Misconduct" and "Student Complaint Procedures."  Please take a few minutes to read these.

Finally, please feel free to stop in or call anytime throughout the semester if you need additional assistance or instruction.

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Other Course Policies:

This course is given by the College of Education. This means that class policies on matters such as requirements, grading, and sanctions for academic dishonesty are governed by the College of Education. Students wishing to add or drop this course after the official deadline must receive the approval of the Dean of the College of Education. Details of the University policy of cross enrollments may be found at:
http://www.uiowa.edu/~provost/deos/crossenroll.doc.

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Syllabus Schedule: