Professor Roger Watt
This post is an interview with Professor Roger Watt, the instructor on the SAGE Campus Unlocking Statistics: from hypothesis to outcome online course, launched in May 2022.
Roger Watt was a Professor of Psychology at the University of Stirling for 32 years and is now Emeritus Professor there. He has done research and taught in many areas of psychology, and focussed in the second half of his career on teaching research methods. In teaching Statistics at Stirling to psychology students, he introduced a number of innovations, including novel methods of delivery, some of which contributed to Stirling attracting the inaugural BPS Award for Innovation in Psychology Programmes in 2014. Roger was appointed as an expert witness for the Cullen Inquiry and was personally credited with establishing the most likely cause of the Ladbroke Grove train disaster.
Interview with professor roger watt
Q: Hi Roger, could you start telling us a bit about yourself?
A: For 32 years I was a Professor of Psychology at Stirling University, Scotland, and I am now an Emeritus Professor. My main research concerned the basic mechanisms of human visual perception and particularly how one could learn from a mix of studying human visual performance and computational models. Over my career, computers have evolved rapidly from a machine that filled most of a room to something I can’t even see inside my phone. I have been intrigued to watch the parallel development of statistical software over that time. My very first published journal article was a computational statistics paper. Computers have completely changed how we do statistics. I have taught many different areas of Psychology over the years and for the last dozen or so I taught statistics and research methods. In 1995 I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. I come from a musical family and play the trumpet. I live in a small town on the edge of the Scottish Highlands.
Photo by @itfeelslikefilm on Unsplash
Q: You're the instructor for the Unlocking Statistics: from hypothesis to outcome course. What inspired you to make an online course with SAGE Campus on this topic?
A: I very much like the concept of online courses. I like the idea that students can manage the pace of learning to suit their needs. I like the idea of bringing multiple media in a way which surrounds the student with ways of learning. Last century, when I was a student I spent most of my study time in the university library following whatever trails through the literature presented themselves. It was a very personal learning journey but one that was completely absorbing. I think that online courses are a wonderful way of capturing that sense of learning that you create for yourself.
Q: You taught statistics to psychology students for several years and many social science students sometimes can’t measure the importance of statistics in their studies. How can the Unlocking Statistics course help social science students?
A: There are lots of problems with how statistics are traditionally presented and how they are perceived. I have lost count of how often I’ve heard students say that statistics is all about the average person. It’s not. Statistics is first and foremost a language we can use to talk about variability – the rich human variations we all appreciate all of the time. My experience has been that once students understand what statistics does, such as how it places limits on what we can claim to know about that variability, then they find it makes sense. From there it is just a short hop to being able to evaluate statistical evidence. In Unlocking Statistics, we have set out to explain what statistics actually does and how it does it. If a student goes away from this course with just these two ideas, then we have succeeded: we study variability through seeking associations between things that vary; we have to reckon with the uncertainty that comes from studying a sample rather than the population.
Q: Who do you think will most benefit from your course? Is it most suitable for postgraduates and researchers or undergraduates could also take the course to start building their skills?
A: I think that this course is for anyone who is unsure about how to approach statistics. It is designed to build understanding because that in turn builds confidence. All too often, statistics looks like a million disconnected facts, each important and each a potential trap for the unwary. This course distils all of that into a few basic principles. This is a great way to start out with statistics. It is also a really useful consolidation for those with some experience already.
Q: What advice can you give faculty and institutions about the importance of statistics courses as part of the students' academic journey? Would you say these are foundational skills for all social sciences courses?
A: Yes, foundational skills. At the heart of everything human, everything in the social sciences is the wonderful range of human variety and variability. No two people are alike, and no two people exist in the same social or physical context. Statistics is the language that is designed and developed to give life to that variability. When used with understanding, statistics opens the door to fascinating ways to explore and understand that variability.
Photo by @kmuza on Unsplash
Q: What do you think the benefits are of teaching this topic in an online course format? Any particular challenges in the adaptation?
A: Online courses have the potential to give students enormous agency. Educators talk a lot about independent learners. I think that when online courses are designed carefully, they can bring that ideal much closer to reality. When I was a student, if I could work out which book the lecturer was using for the lectures, then I could get the book and skip the lectures. In the lectures I had no agency: I had to sit facing the front, I had to listen quietly, I had to leave at the end. I had to be highly obedient. Give me the book, or the journal articles, and I was free to pursue learning in my own way. I like to think that this is a kind of disobedience.
Q: What's a top tip/take away from your course? Do you have a defined structure or steps to follow to assist with the statistical methods until reaching an outcome?
A: My tip for statistics: “Try it!” When it comes to analysing data, then the more work you do before looking at the data, the easy it will be when you do look at the data. Decide what the hypothesis is, what the variables are, how you think they might be related and then just follow that through with the data.
Q: Do you have a favourite module or activity from the course that you enjoyed preparing the most or thought to be a good and interactive way to incorporate content into the learning experience?
A: Yes. My favourite part of the module has always been whatever part I was working on at the time!
Unlocking Statistics: from hypothesis to outcome is available on the SAGE Campus platform. If you’re a faculty member or are interested in the course for yourself or for use at your institution, try a free module on our demo hub platform.
Please note that SAGE Campus is a digital library product, so you can only access it via your institution. Libraries can get a full 30-day institution-wide trial to SAGE Campus. Recommend us to your library or request a trial if you are an administrator via this form.
