Course Description

This class is about how we study communication as a social science. It will provide you with an overview with how social scientific research on communication is done.  When you are finished, you should be able to:

• Read reports about communication research in the popular press more critically.
• Read and critique research studies more effectively.
• Look at your own and others’ communication through the lens of communication science.
• Shape your ideas about communication into clear, specific questions involving testable hypotheses. 
• Express and critique causal arguments about relationships between variables.
• Identify and use the basic tools for measuring communication.
• Understand and conduct basic statistical tests of association and difference.
• Write and think with new found precision and rigor.
• Impress others with what a thoughtful, attractive person you are.