Importance and usefulness of statistics in social sciences majors

Abstract

Statistics is a necessary discipline for professional practice, including ​​Social Sciences majors. However, to the difficulties in the learning of statistics at the professional level, in the case of the Social Sciences can be added other elements, such as the predominance of qualitative approaches and the gap that often exists between what is taught in the university and what the graduates will really do in the workplace. Here we shows the preliminary results of a study carried out with professionals in the fields of Sociology and Communication, with the purpose of identifying and characterizing the statistical activities of their work environment based on the uses, contexts and most significant situations in each professional field. It was found that, in general, statistics is a discipline used by all interviewees, albeit with different levels of complexity. It was possible to identify the main uses of statistics in these two professional fields from which it is possible to derive specific tasks as well as the possible techniques and statistical models involved. Before long, it is expected to offer curricular and didactic guidelines for statistical training in the field of Social Sciences.