Module description
This module aims to equip students with quantitative data analysis techniques. The module consists of understanding the main ideas, principles and statistical techniques broadly used in political economy research. The module is intermediate in terms of level of difficulty and it is mostly devoted to understanding regression analysis. It is assumed that students taking this module already have some basic knowledge of regression analysis and inferential statistics although these topics will be covered in the first sessions. The module has a practical focus and is based on the use of STATA. Students are not expected to have familiarity with such software. In this sense, practical training will be provided through hands-on workshop sessions where empirical and real survey data would be analysed using statistical package Stata. This course is NOT meant for students who have taken any prior intermediate or advance modules in statistical analysis and/or Stata. Likewise, students who have NEVER taken a statistics module are encouraged to seriously consider attending this modules. Students who have never been exposed to statistics or have had limited training on quantitative methods are only welcome to join the module as long as they understand the expected pace of the lectures and seminars and the required prior knowledge of statistics.
Educational aims & objectives
This module is designed to provide students with analytical tools to analyse political and economic phenomena. In particular, the module will focus on regression analysis but also on statistical inference. The goal is to train students in particular techniques that can be useful to learn about reality in a world where data may be limited. To achieve this, students will learn how to develop and test hypotheses using large datasets.
Previous knowledge of statistics and basic high-school algebra is desirable and it is assumed that students are familiar with these concepts. The module will have an intuitive and applied approach using particular examples from political science. However, you should expect some mathematical calculations and the use of a calculator will be required.
The course will combine lectures with practical sessions at the computer lab. One of the main goals of this course is that students were able to produce their own research using statistics by the end of the module. For this reason, there is a big emphasis in the practical component of the course. Students will learn the different statistical techniques at the theoretical level during the lectures. In the pc-lab, students will learn how to implement such theoretical knowledge by using STATA, a major statistic software.