Postgraduate Courses

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Describe the relationship between theory, hypothesis, data collection, and analysis in social science research.
• 2.
  Plan a research study, including specification of hypothesis and selection of data and methods.
• 3.
  Assess whether evidence is indicative of a cause and effect relationship.
• 4.
  Suggest approaches for assessing causal relationships when it is not possible to conduct a traditional experiment.
• 5.
  Describe the most important sources of data used in social science research.
• 6.
  Develop a sampling strategy according to the needs of a research study.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Identify the fundamental concepts and practices in statistics for social science.
• 2.
  Recognize graphic and numerical summary of data with respect to distribution of variables and association between them; data-generating processes and study design; probability theory; probability distributions of continuous variables with a special emphasis on the normal distribution; sampling distributions; principles of statistical inference, including confidence intervals and hypothesis testing; inference for population means and proportions; statistical tests of relationship between two categorical variables; and simple linear regression (OLS).
• 3.
  Operate a popular statistical package for data management and statistical analysis.
• 4.
  Conduct more advanced statistical analysis which is useful in the academic career, financial industries, marketing and consulting.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Illustrate major concepts and analytical perspectives sociologists employ to study social inequality and stratification.
• 2.
  Recognize the major empirical findings on social inequality and mobility in mainland China and Hong Kong.
• 3.
  Apply the knowledge to analyze new issues related to social inequality in both mainland China and Hong Kong.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Critique major works on China’s political economy.
• 2.
  Develop theoretically informed and empirically grounded research papers on important issues in China’s economic transformation.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Explain the theories on social changes, including reform.
• 2.
  Analyze the dynamics of social and political changes in different political systems.
• 3.
  Identify the problems faced by authoritarian regimes, like China, in managing social changes.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Explain theoretical foundations of modern regression analysis.
• 2.
  Conduct applied regression analysis using statistical software.
• 3.
  Write academic research paper with a quantitative orientation.
• 4.
  Develop a broader scope for regression analysis in light of further study.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Explain China’s rural development process, including the difficulties it faced, from the late Qing to the present.
• 2.
  Develop the analytical skills with which to make intelligible sense of this development process, and in understanding the relationship between “variables” in the specific context of rural China, which consists of a number of episodes of salient historical importance.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Conduct simple demographic analyses, such as population forecast, as well as tempo and international comparison of levels of fertility or mortality.
• 2.
  Apply models and theories of migration to labor migration in and from developing countries, as well as transnational human capital transfer.
• 3.
  Conduct PowerPoint presentation of research of social science topics.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Apply key theories and concepts in comparative politics.
• 2.
  Write critical evaluation reports of research papers in comparative politics.
• 3.
  Apply adequate scientific methodologies to individual’s research.
• 4.
  Design and develop an analytic research paper.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Identify critical issues in the developing world.
• 2.
  Apply core concepts of economics to critically analyze significant social phenomena and interpret important events related to the developing world.
• 3.
  Analyze the core issues in economic development strategies.
• 4.
  Use simple statistical methods to study some issues related to development.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Understand the functioning of Chinese political system and how it shapes social & economic life.
• 2.
  Learn how to support findings with empirical evidence.
• 3.
  Develop analytical thinking skills by understanding diverse views and theories.
• 4.
  Improve English writing through weekly reports and the final research paper.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Develop a sociological mindfulness toward gender.
• 2.
  Understand differential performance of boys and girls in schools.
• 3.
  Understand the gender wage gap, diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
• 4.
  Understand the gendered division of labour in the home.
• 5.
  Understand gendered violence.
• 6.
  Understand how the global economy is gendered.
• 7.
  Understand how international politics and international conflict is gendered.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Have an overview of the scholarship of democratization from past to present.
• 2.
  Understand the key concepts and methods in studying the rise and fall of democracy.
• 3.
  Learn how to place social science theoretical research in concrete political and historical contexts.
• 4.
  Understand why the normative knowledge of democracy is important to empirical study of democracy.
• 5.
  Critically review existing literature and learn to come up with new research questions.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Apply the most popular forms of Geographical Information System (GIS) software applications for sociodemographic analysis and other purposes.
• 2.
  Analyze social contexts to select and apply the appropriate software packages and techniques.
• 3.
  Explain and incorporate GIS results and their implications in social science and other fields in reports.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Recognize the key classical and contemporary studies pertinent to personality theories and assessment.
• 2.
  Identify, relate, and apply the key concepts in everyday life.
• 3.
  Identify a research question, devise an action plan to conduct a study, gather and analyze the pertinent information, and present the findings in a written report.
• 4.
  Conceptualize, structure, and articulate original ideas about personality-related topics.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Recognize the interactions between humans and physical environments and explain them with reference to theories in psychology and other social sciences.
• 2.
  Analyze the human dimension of environmental issues from psychological and behavioral perspectives.
• 3.
  Analyze their own experience and everyday encounters regarding the physical environments.
• 4.
  Understand, explain, and evaluate research studies that examine human-environment relationships.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Identify key theories and concepts in understanding human behavior from a psychological perspective.
• 2.
  Apply the theories and concepts to their own experiences and daily lives.
• 3.
  Explain how psychological research is conducted and how psychologists investigate human behavior scientifically.
• 4.
  Recognize the scientific basis of psychology.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Recognize the various dimensions of well-being and explain them with reference to theories in psychology and other social sciences.
• 2.
  Gain insight into how research on well-being is conducted through a global and comparative perspective.
• 3.
  Explain, evaluate, and conduct research on well-being.
• 4.
  Analyze their own experience and everyday encounters regarding well-being.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• 1.
  Relate the curriculum and in particular the extra-curricular content and program learning outcomes of the PGD/MA(SOSC) program to their career trajectory.
• 2.
  Formulate a plan of action for their future career based on the reflective activity undertaken in the course.