Statistics for University Administrators

Overview
Ever been asked for the margin of error on a percentage? Or if your percentage is different from the benchmark? Or if the percentage of student retention for this year is different from that for last year?
This one-day course provides participants with hands-on experience of analysing their own type of records and confidently interpreting numerical results for reports to committees, or for returns to the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
Presentations, demonstrations and hands-on computer practicals will be based around Microsoft Excel. Formulae are kept to a minimum; instead, we concentrate on results, their interpretation and reporting in plain language.

Who Should Attend?
Administrators in educational establishments working in Policy and Planning units; those involved in interpreting student records and in reporting to committees; those involved in producing returns to the HESA - anyone in these positions will benefit greatly from this course.
Participants are assumed to have basic Excel skills such as obtaining totals and percentages.

How You Will Benefit
By the end of the course you will be familiar with basic statistical methods for making sound assessments. You will also be able to appreciate HESA guidelines on the statistical importance of your results. To date, 295 out of 361 attendees (81.7% ± 4.0%) said they would definitely recommend this course.

What Do We Cover?
  • Estimation: standard errors and confidence intervals for percentages
  • Comparing a percentage to a benchmark: one-sample z-test
  • Comparing two percentages: two-sample z-test
  • Comparing more than two percentages: chi-square test.
The course will make use of our Excel Add-In SSC-Stat, which provides some statistical features that are not available in standard Excel. The Add-In is freely available to course participants.

Software
Practical work will be done in: Excel
Note: For practical work, participants must bring their own laptop with a fully licensed version of Excel. You will also need to pre-install our Excel Add-In, SSC-Stat. This does NOT apply to the course at Goldsmiths or Exeter, which will be held in a PC lab.

Extra Information
Other Venues: We often run this course at other venues.  Please contact us for further details, or if you wish to host this course at your institution.

Related Courses: This is part of a series of short courses for HE professionals working in administrative, planning and support roles: 
Course Dates
3 April 2019 (at Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross)
9 May 2019 (at University ​of Exeter, Streatham Campus)
19 September 2019

Venue: Reading, UK (unless otherwise stated)
Duration: 1 day
Price: £294

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