Northern Arizona University 3 credits POS
This course is designed as a core elective for the Master of Public Administration (MPA) program and related graduate certificates data analytics in the public sector. In today's data-driven public sector, effective administrators must not only collect data but also analyze and interpret it to inform decision-making. This introductory course focuses on building data literacy and applied data analytics skills using Microsoft Excel. Students will learn how to gather and manage data, calculate and interpret descriptive statistics, create basic data visualizations, and perform introductory inferential analyses, all within the context of public administration and social science examples. Emphasis is placed on practical skill development -- from cleaning and organizing datasets in Excel to summarizing data trends and drawing simple evidence-based conclusions. By the end of the course, students will be prepared to communicate their findings effectively through written reports and visual charts, bridging the gap between raw data and real-world policy or management decisions. The course culminates in a final project where students conduct a small-scale data analysis on a public sector topic and present their results in a brief professional report. Letter grade only.
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