Traditional curricula in the social sciences result in students having statistical knowledge that is inert and consequently of low transferability. This is in part because these curricula separate mathematical and probabilistic content (present in statistics service courses) from the context in which the collection of observational and experimental data is designed (present in courses about research methods). This paper proposes a curriculum that removes this separation by merging the two domains into the research competency, in line with emergent pedagogical insights. This study describes the new curriculum and compares some preliminary learning outcomes of students following the proposed integrated competency-based curriculum with that of students following the traditional curriculum. The results suggest a higher level of understanding is achieved through the integrated approach.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education