MC 6301. At least not in the 21st Century. Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash
As communicators, we are socialized from the womb to avoid numbers. We word nerds like all kinds of things, but mainly, the land of the quantitative does not contain very much we want.
Au Contraire, mon cher!
I’m here to tell you that data is sovereign. You know you need it, that you need to understand it, use it, interpret it. It’s an inescapable part of our world, including the world of words.
Just think – the digital realm alone is stuffed to the max with numbers. Website visits, views, clickpath; social media likes, shares, clickthroughs (well, clicks-through, more accurately), followers, connections, engagement… If you are a pro communicator, you cannot ignore the numbers. Well, you can.
If you want to shorten your career.
I’m not saying all of you have to be mathematicians. Far from it. I’m just saying that certainly when it comes to research, whether primary or secondary, whether digital or analogue, you need to understand what research is and how it works. That’s where MC 6301, Quantitative Research Methods for Strategic Communication comes in.
Amazingingly, I’ve been teaching this course now for four years. I’m NOT a “quant.” Many of my colleagues are highly so, whereas I’m the guy who says, when confronted with a need to run SPSS, “don’t we have people for that?” That’s why when I teach it, it’s not about how to do structural equation modeling, it’s about how to use the results of the quantitative analysis that SPSS spits out and make sense of it.
There are several main tools in the quantitative research toolset: Experiments, Surveys and Content Analysis. You can gather data through primary or secondary sources, and the way you analyze that data is to use methods that enable you to count, and to use numerical values to discuss trends and predict future outcomes. This is what you learn in this class.
I promise, it’s a cool, fun, engaging course! Well, just like all of our StratComm courses!
Ready to make communication YOUR business superpower? Investigate the BGSU MA in Strategic Communication, Sean Williams, Coordinator, and associate teaching professor.
