By Niño Manaog
With reports from Rector John Latoza
“There is a need to level up our capacities to do research—and one way to do it is to improve our skills in interpreting data from our own researches.”
Thus said Dr. Pedro G. Gavino, Capiz State University (CapSU)’s vice-president for research and extension, during the opening program for the Training on Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) on Sept. 8–9, 2014 at the Conference Room of CapSU Roxas City Main Campus in Fuentes Drive, Roxas City.
The two-day seminar-workshop featured the expertise of its own faculty, Prof. Maritess Delfin Villanueva, assistant professor at CapSU Pontevedra satellite college who lectured and led exercise-workshops on basic statistics and inferential statistics using IBM-Statistical Package on Social Sciences (SPSS) to some 45 faculty and staff engaged in research and extension.
For two days, Villanueva led the Data Management & Statistical Analysis in Social Science Research using IBM-SPSS Statistics Version 20. In the said period, participants were taught basic statistics skills using the said software package used for statistical analysis. According to IBM’s website, using the said software allows one to “predict with confidence what will happen next so that [you] can make smarter decisions, solve problems and improve outcomes.”
Villanueva obtained Master of Arts in Teaching Mathematics from the CapSU Pontevedra Campus and Master of Science in Statistics at the University of the Philippines Los Baños.
On the first day, Villanueva introduced the basic concepts in statistics, categories of statistics and statistical softwares. More important, Villanueva guided the participants on how to run SPSS and go through the basic operations in using its features.
On the second day, participants were taught inferential statistics, which is used to test hypotheses and make estimations using sample data. Lectures and exercises included those on analysis of variance, chi-square and regression analysis.
At the day’s end, the training drew collaborative support from the technical facilitators from the CapSU Pontevedra graduate school and faculty, led by Dr. Jocelyn Dagudag, research chair of said campus.
The lecture-workshop gained favorable feedback from the participants from across the CapSU campuses.
Engr. Arlyn Olmo of the College of Agricultural Engineering of CapSU Burias highly noted Villanueva’s expertise in statistics and requested that she conduct the same to their campus on another date.
For her part, Dr. Ma. Shiela Simon of the College of Education of CapSU Roxas City Main Campus had to say that the hands-on exercises helped much in the understanding of the skills taught.
Then, besides recognizing the availability of the free software, a number of participants also thought the hands-on incisive and helpful even as they also recognized the need to conduct the said capability-building activity for a longer period.
For his part, Gavino urged the participants to apply the skills taught and also encouraged them to echo their learning to their respective campuses and satellite colleges.
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| Participants, facilitators and resource speakers of the training (Photo by Rector John Latoza) |
