Past events

Current events can be found here.

The materials related to past workshops can be found on the Centre for Computational Social Science ELE page (note: requires a valid University of Exeter login).

When	Time	Description	Add to your calendar
24 January 2024	15:00	Exeter Q-Step Relaunch and Networking Event We would like to invite you to our upcoming networking event, to celebrate our launch as the Centre for Computational Social Science (C2S2). Full details	Add event
29 November 2023	13:00	Utilising Textual Data in Crime Analysis: Insights from the Sex Market and Public Reactions to Crime on Twitter Text is often used for qualitative research, but it hasn’t been used much for quantitative research. This talk will show how we can use automated text analysis in crime research.. Full details	Add event
8 November 2023	10:00	Maps in Stata The two hour interactive workshop aims to equip the participants with the tools and the code to start making high-quality maps in Stata. Full details	Add event
29 - 30 June 2023		NCRM Mixed Methods Workshop This two-day workshop will focus on analysing and presenting data from mixed methods projects. REGISTRATIONS ARE NOW LIVE. Full details	Add event
17 - 27 April 2023		NCRM 2nd Annual Exeter Spring Computational Communication Science School Researchers interested in computational social science will be given the chance to learn new skills at our 2nd annual spring school in April 2023. Full details	Add event
8 February 2023	14:00	Institutional Ethnography: A Feminist Approach to Analysing Institutions Using Texts Institutional Ethnography is an interdisciplinary feminist approach to research that examines how texts and language organise our everyday lives.. Full details	Add event
28 November 2022	14:00	Q-Step Work in Progress (WIP) Seminar: Michele Scotto Di Vettimo Michele Scotto Di Vettimo (SPSPA) will discuss his working paper on EU integration and policy preferences.. Full details	Add event
22 November 2022	14:00	Q-Step Work in Progress (WIP) Seminar: Simge Andi & Travis Coan Simge Andi & Travis Coan (SPSPA) will discuss their ongoing research measuring the impact of fake news laws on online political discussions. Full details	Add event
16 November 2022	14:00	Q-Step Work in Progress (WIP) Seminar: Alexey Bessudnov Alexey Bessudnov (SPSPA) will discuss his work on predicting perceived ethnicity from data on personal names for major ethnic groups in Russia.. Full details	Add event
2 November 2022	14:30	Decolonising Quantitative Teaching The teaching of quantitative methods has a crucial role to play in the decolonisation of undergraduate politics degree programmes, given that Eurocentrism determines the quantitative approaches used today. As such, the decolonisation of, and through, quantitative methods teaching is both possible and necessary. Full details	Add event
5 October 2022	13:00	Suffrage, Turnout and the Household: The Case of Early Women Voters in Sweden How were newly enfranchised women mobilized? Classic narratives suggest that newly enfranchised women were mobilized by their arguably more politicized husbands. However, husbands' mobilization of wives has not been subject to rigorous tests, primarily reflecting lack of suitable data.. Full details	Add event
6 - 14 April 2022		NCRM UoE Computational Communication Methods Spring School - APPLY NOW Researchers interested in computational social science will be given the chance to learn new skills at a spring school in April 2022. The NCRM/Exeter Computational Communication Methods Spring School will provide training at introductory and advanced levels, catering for both social scientists and data scientists. Full details	Add event
11 March 2022	13:00	'Group identities and strategic discrimination' presented by Dr Dominik Duell, University of Innsbruck In a laboratory setting, we explore strategic discrimination in principal-agent relationships, which arises from mutually reinforcing expectations of identity-contingent choices. Our experimental design isolates the influence of the strategic environment from effects of other sources of discrimination, including statistical differences between subpopulations and outright prejudice.. Full details	Add event
3 March 2022	9:00	'The 4D Project: a holistic response to climate misinformation' presented by John Cook, Monash University A number of psychological challenges hinder the countering of misinformation and science denial. Polarization on issues such as climate change and COVID-19 result in some segments of the population being more resistant to fact-checks. Inoculation theory offers a solution to polarization, with experimental studies finding that inoculating messages neutralize the polarizing influence of misinformation on issues like climate change.. Full details	Add event
24 February 2022	14:00	'Microtargeting: Reverse engineering of an ethical conundrum' presented by Prof Stephan Lewandowsky (University of Bristol) There has been much concern about the “microtargeting” of political messages at individuals on social media based on sometimes sensitive personal characteristics that are inferred by the platforms from mundane data and activities. Evidence suggests that this type of microtargeted advertising, for example based on recipients’ personality, can be effective.. Full details	Add event
23 November 2021	11:00	South West Doctoral Training Programme (SWDTP): Using the Understanding Society study for longitudinal research Funded by ESRC and as part of NCRM training, Understanding Society is the largest longitudinal study of its kind. It provides crucial information for researchers and policymakers on the changes and stability of people's lives in the UK on topics including Biomarkers, Genetics and Epigenetics; Covid-19; Education; Employment; Ethnicity & immigration; Family & households; Health & wellbeing; Politics & Social attitudes; Transport & environment; Young people. As with most other longitudinal household surveys, the structure and documentation of the Understanding Society are quite complex. Sometimes this may seem as an obstacle for researchers who are just starting to use the data. Full details	Add event
23 November 2021	9:00	Exeter Q-Step/NCRM Introduction to Nvivo for Social Scientists NVivo is a powerful and intuitive qualitative data analysis software for gaining richer insights from diverse data. This workshop is aimed at those who have no experience of Nvivo and little-to-no experience of computer coding. Full details	Add event
25 - 29 October 2021	9:30	NCRM Research Methods Festival: 25-29 October 2021 The University of Exeter and Exeter Q-Step Centre are partners in the National Centre for Research Methods -- the UKRI funded national consortium for social science research methods training. Full details	Add event
7 July 2021	14:00	South West Doctoral Training Programme (SWDTP): Secondary analysis of cross-national, comparative survey data webinar Those completing PhD research over the past 16 months may have had to develop new strategies for conducting comparative research because travel to other countries has not been possible. Full details	Add event
14 June 2021	13:00	University of Exeter Workshop on Media and UK Elections The British Election Longitudinal News Study 2015-2019 (BELNS) covers campaign coverage relating to three general elections: 2015, 2017, 2019. Full details	Add event
2 June 2021	14:00	Women Candidates Use More Positive Language than Men Candidates in Political Campaigns Dr Akitaka Matsuo will be presenting his work with Tiffany Barnes, Charles Crabtree and Yoshikuni Ono. What explains the type of electoral campaign run by politicians? Prior work shows that parties strategically manipulate the level of emotive language used in their campaigns based on their incumbency status, their policy position, and objective economic conditions ... Full details	Add event
26 May 2021	14:00	Negativity in Politicians' Communication during Campaign and Regular Times Bruno Castanho Silva, Lennart Schürmann, and Sven-Oliver Proksch While research on the tone of politicians' rhetoric has picked up steam in recent years, almost all of our knowledge on factors that influence negativity is based on political communication during electoral campaigns. Full details	Add event
19 May 2021	14:00	A Cross-National Analysis of the Effect of Parties' Characteristics on Affective Polarization and Interpersonal Trust This paper uses multilevel models to investigate how parties influence affective polarization and interpersonal trust in multiparty systems. Full details	Add event
12 May 2021	14:00	When (not) to trust the overlap in confidence intervals: A practical guide Researchers often aim to compare estimates across groups. For an intuitive and compact presentation of empirical results, many practitioners prefer reporting group-specific estimates instead of pairwise differences, and subsequently seek to infer the statistical significance of pairwise differences from the confidence intervals of the group-specific estimates. Full details	Add event
11 November 2020	15:30	Understanding the relationships between risk factors, intersectional identities and criminal career trajectories: A multilevel approach Researchers have called for developmental criminologists to better understand how criminal career patterns and 'risk factors' relate to intersectional identities. Full details	Add event
22 October 2020	16:30	US Political Culture and the Presidential Election Seminar (with the Exeter Q-Step Centre): Chryl Laird (Bowdoin), ‘Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behaviour’ Full details	Add event
9 September 2020	15:00	Establishment Relations and Fatherhood Wage Premiums Fathers often earn more than their childless counterparts, although effects can vary among groups of men. Most of this literature uses micro data and attributes these wage effects to individual selection. We instead draw on relational inequality theory (RIT) to argue the importance of establishment relations behind group differences in net fatherhood wage premiums.. Full details	Add event
1 July 2020	13:00	Data Analysis and visualisation with Python Building upon the basic introduction offered to Python in workshop 1, this workshop will cover exploratory data analysis, quantitative data analysis, and visualising data in Python and the Seaborn package. Full details	Add event
24 June 2020	13:00	Introduction to Python for Social Scientists This workshop is aimed at those who have no experience of Python and little-to-no experience of computer coding.. Full details	Add event
3 June 2020	13:00	Longitudinal Data Analysis In this workshop you will learn about the principles of longitudinal data analysis; when it should be used and the advantages and disadvantages of longitudinal methods. Full details	Add event
15 May 2020	13:00	An Introduction to Open-Source Intelligence and its practical applications - ONLINE Workshop This seminar will be an Introduction to Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT). It will cover some broad themes of what OSINT is and what it is not, as well as some thoughts on the future of OSINT.. Full details	Add event
12 May 2020	14:00	Bayesian analysis with JAGS/Topics in Bayesian analysis - ONLINE Workshop One of the advantages of Bayesian analysis is its great flexibility with respect to the functional form of the model. To take full advantage of this flexibility, the analyst need to know how to write code for Stan, JAGS, BUGS or a similar sample.. Full details	Add event
11 May 2020	14:00	Introduction to Bayesian analysis - ONLINE Workshop This workshop offers an introduction to Bayesian analysis in R. We will talk about the theoretical underpinnings of Bayesian analysis and the practical considerations for conducting such analyses in R.. Full details	Add event
18 March 2020	15:30	CANCELLED: Understanding the relationships between risk factors, intersectional identities and criminal career trajectories: A multilevel approach Researchers have called for developmental criminologists to better understand how criminal career patterns and 'risk factors' relate to intersectional identities.. Full details	Add event
10 March 2020	14:00	CANCELLED - Hope and Despair: Presidents, Prime Ministers, Populists, Polarization and Mass Democratic Accountability in Challenging Times The Executive Approval Project (EAP) is a global collaborative data and research project whose goal is to measure public approval of political leaders to help understand why some executives are despised and removed while others remain popular and reelected.. Full details	Add event
4 March 2020	13:00	Data Analysis with R for Social Scientists Building upon the basic introduction offered to R in workshop 4, this workshop will cover exploratory data analysis, quantitative data analysis, and visualising data using R, as well as introducing the various libraries that a user needs to be familiar with in order to carry out such tasks. Full details	Add event
7 February 2020	15:30	Geographical and Place-based dependence in multilevel models Multilevel models have been applied to study many geographical processes in epidemiology, economics, political science, sociology, urban analytics, and transportation. They are most often used to express how the effect of a treatment or intervention may vary by geographical group, a form of geographical process heterogeneity.. Full details	Add event
5 February 2020	13:00	Introduction to GIS A geographic information system (GIS) is a system designed to allow researchers to capture, store, manipulate, analyse, manage, and present spatial or geographic data. This workshop will introduce attendees to the introductory principles of GIS and how to use Python QGIS for research purposes. Full details	Add event
30 January 2020	9:00	Analysing ambiguity: understanding and managing complexity in the professional environment Suggested participants: Mid/senior level managers, SMEs in any business sector, those seeking promotion to management levels or new to management, HR SMEs, Data scientists/analysts. Full details	Add event
15 January 2020	13:00	Introduction to R for Social Scientists This workshop is aimed at those who have no experience of R, and will provide a solid introduction to using it for data analysis by covering how to handle data structures such as vectors, matrices, and data frames. Full details	Add event
3 December 2019	12:30	Introduction to LaTex LaTex is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting that is used extensively in academia and elsewhere for technical and scientific documents. This workshop is aimed at those with little-to-no experience of LaTex, but who wish to develop a working understanding of it in order to produce high-quality documents. Full details	Add event
22 November 2019	15:30	Data Analysis & Q-Step Alumni Careers Q&A Discussion Come along to our Q&A event and speak to a number of recent Exeter Q-Step and Politics graduates who have taken different career routes into social data science since graduating! This event is intended for any students, UG or PG, interested in a career in data analysis. You will have the opportunity to find out about a range of careers, and learn about what you can do, both now during your studies and after graduation, to follow a similar path.. Full details	Add event
20 November 2019	10:30	Who do we think you are? Detecting salient identities in text Behaviour differs between social groups – this appears to be true for linguistic style as well. Recent research has shown differences between age, gender, religious and political groups in the way group members speak. Since we are members of many different social groups, the question arises whether group membership affects our linguistic style constantly or whether our style shifts towards the group membership most relevant to the situation. Full details	Add event
8 November 2019	15:30	The case against perfection in the mean: Why it is time for an individualised approach to evidence for education Analyses of educational interventions need to produce evidence that is relevant to specific groups of students. When a group is not the target population of an intervention, any analysis involving just that group is called subgroup analysis, which is often regarded as a statistical malpractice, as its findings are often underpowered, unreliable, prone to overinterpretation at best, or misleading at worst.. Full details	Add event
6 November 2019	13:00	Data Analysis and visualisation with Python for Social Scientists Building upon the basic introduction offered to Python in workshop 1, this workshop will cover exploratory data analysis, quantitative data analysis, and visualising data in Python and the Seaborn package. Full details	Add event
6 November 2019	10:30	Worlds Colliding: Examining the social networks and linguistic patterns of a merging organization through email During a merger the acquiring organization is often a dominant force. It overwhelms the target organization and replaces its norms, routines, and formal structures. I will present the results from an ongoing analysis of a massively rich dataset of emails, longitudinal surveys, individual performance, and ethnography that paints a detailed picture of an unfolding organizational merger.. Full details	Add event
29 October 2019	13:00	When politics and diplomacy collide; the conflict spiral in the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 An investigation into the conflicting interests and powerplay revealed in the behaviour of the main protagonists- USSR and USA. A brief overview of this dangerous incident will be provided, but the main focus will be an analysis of public versus private decisions. We'll look at the personal drives and motivations of key figures such as John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushev and discover why was not all as it seemed... Full details	Add event
2 October 2019	13:00	Introduction to Python for Social Scientists This workshop is aimed at those who have no experience of Python and little-to-no experience of computer coding. The workshop will provide a practical introduction to the Python programming language, and cover a host of the major operations a user will need to do in Python; ranging from assigning variables and working with lists, through to writing to/reading from a file, producing graphs, and debugging. Full details	Add event
9 - 13 September 2019	11:30	Q-estival 2019: People, Data and Society The Exeter Q-Step Centre is celebrating six years of teaching and research and our move to a new home. We are holding a series of workshops, seminars and keynote addresses around our key research labs: Education and Life Course Studies, Policing in Practice and Computational Social Science. We will also be hosting a related Arts & Culture stream. Full details	Add event
25 July 2019	13:00	Understanding women's mental health across the lifecourse The aim of this workshop is to bring researchers together across the University of Exeter, and beyond, with an interest in understanding women’s mental health. The workshop will convene a multi-disciplinary group with shared substantive interests, but who take different approaches to research on this topic.. Full details	Add event
24 June 2019		Institute of Coding Summer School 2019 at the University of Exeter For students with little or no experience of programming or coding, the Institute of Coding Summer School at Exeter is an opportunity to enhance your digital skills through a course designed to introduce you to the fundamentals of computer programming and social data analysis. Full details	Add event
5 June 2019	13:00	CANCELLED: Introduction to SQL for Data Science Unfortunately this workshop has been cancelled. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. Full details	Add event
17 April 2019	13:00	Detecting trolls on Reddit: Introduction to Computational Text Analysis and Supervised Machine Learning in R Computational propaganda is becoming a non-negligible presence on news forums and social media, and it is crucial to be able to separate between real users and social bots or trolls. Following Twitter, Reddit released a list of accounts suspected of being state-sponsored trolls, users who wrote more than 15.000 posts and comments between 2015 and 2018. How precisely can these posts be detected based on their content and the available metadata and what techniques can be used to achieve maximum accuracy?. Full details	Add event
20 March 2019	13:30	Longitudinal Data Analysis for Social Scientists In this workshop you will learn about the principles of longitudinal data analysis; when it should be used and the advantages and disadvantages of longitudinal methods. Full details	Add event
14 March 2019	12:00	Are you listening? Crisis Negotiation Skills with Deborah Goodwin OBE Join us as we welcome prestigious guest speaker Dr Deborah Goodwin OBE, to present her seminar on Crisis Negotiation Skills. Ever wondered how negotiators work? How do they even start to de-escalate something like a siege or a conflict? Would you know what to do? No? Well, here's a chance to learn! We're also throwing in a pizza lunch for attendees!. Full details	Add event
13 March 2019	15:30	Seminar Series - “Can genetics tell us anything about voting patterns, including Brexit?” Abstract TBC. Full details	Add event
6 March 2019	13:30	Data Analysis with R for Social Scientists Building upon the basic introduction offered to R in workshop 4, this workshop will cover exploratory data analysis, quantitative data analysis, and visualising data using R, as well as introducing the various libraries that a user needs to be familiar with in order to carry out such tasks. Full details	Add event
5 March 2019	13:00	Gender, Sexual Orientation and Stereotypes: Challenges for Lesbian and Gay Candidates This paper explores how the public stereotypes politicians based on gender and sexual orientation when cued about these identities in low information environments. While many studies examine high profile races to demonstrate the impact that media coverage and its potential to trigger stereotypes has on opportunities for female or queer candidates, few studies explore its implications in typical elections at the riding level.. Full details	Add event
27 February 2019	15:30	Seminar Series - “Measuring global gender inequality indicators using large-scale online advertising data” The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a key instrument in setting the agenda around global development until 2030. The promotion of gender equality features prominently in the SDGs, both as a standalone goal as well as in relation to other goals (e.g access to education). Full details	Add event
13 February 2019	15:30	Seminar Series - 'Religious decline in the West: Unravelling age, period and cohort effects' Old people tend to be more religious than young people, and Western societies today are less religious than they were in the past. Scholars disagree, though, about what’s changing and why.. Full details	Add event
6 February 2019	13:00	Introduction to Discourse Network Analysis (DNA) Discourse network analysis is a toolbox of research methods for the analysis of actor-based debates, such as policy debates or political discussions. Examples include the policy debates on climate change, pension politics, or around the introduction of large infrastructure projects. Full details	Add event
23 January 2019	13:00	Network Analysis for Social Scientists This workshop provides an introduction for beginners to Social Network Analysis. It gives an overview of key concepts needed to design research that looks at social relations (networks) that connect individual units (actors), so that students can apply social network analysis to their own research.. Full details	Add event
9 January 2019	13:00	Introduction to R for Social Scientists This workshop is aimed at those who have no experience of R, and will provide a solid introduction to using it for data analysis by covering how to handle data structures such as vectors, matrices, and data frames. Full details	Add event
5 December 2018	14:00	Sentiment Analysis/Career as a Data Scientist ASI Data Science utilise artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques in conjunction with large and small data sets in order to provide businesses with a competitive advantage. In this workshop, members of the company will provide an in-depth understanding of sentiment analysis, and how it can identify and categorise opinions from text data in order to understand the attitude of the individual(s) that wrote a piece of text. Full details	Add event
4 December 2018	15:30	Seminar Series - 'From riot police to tweets: How world leaders use social media during contentious politics' Elite communication has the potential to influence public opinion, civil conflict, and diplomatic interactions. However, a comparative study of leaders' public rhetoric has proven elusive due to the difficulties of developing comparable measures across countries and over time. The advent of social media sites, and its widespread adoption by world leaders, offers a unique new source of data to overcome these challenges. Full details	Add event
14 November 2018	15:30	Seminar Series - 'Connected networks, wellbeing and the power of representation: Qualitative and quantitative evidence from Facebook and social network data' Full details	Add event
7 November 2018	13:00	Data Analysis with Python for Social Scientists Building upon the basic introduction offered to Python in workshop 1, this workshop will cover exploratory data analysis, quantitative data analysis, and visualising data in Python. It will also provide an introduction to the major Python packages used in data analysis; including NumPy, Pandas, and Seaborn. Full details	Add event
15 October 2018	11:00	The Tyranny of Distance: Assessing and Explaining the Apparent Decline in U.S. Military Performance This is the first in a series of Q-Step Seminar talks for Autumn 2018. The talk will address the growing sense that U.S. military effectiveness has been on the wane in recent years. Is this the case? If so, what are the reasons for the decay in American combat performance?. Full details	Add event
10 October 2018	13:00	Introduction to Python for Social Scientists Python is increasingly used by social scientists to collect, process and analyse new types of unstructured or semi-structured data, such as online text and social media data. It is an accessible, yet versatile programming language which is also broadly used for data science and machine learning tasks, combining multiple types of data, simulation and visualization. This workshop provides an introduction to basic programming notions in Python, and introduces some of the most useful packages used in social science research. No previous programming experience is required.. Full details	Add event
3 October 2018	13:00	Introduction to Python for Social Scientists Python is increasingly used by social scientists to collect, process and analyse new types of unstructured or semi-structured data, such as online text and social media data. It is an accessible, yet versatile programming language which is also broadly used for data science and machine learning tasks, combining multiple types of data, simulation and visualization. This workshop provides an introduction to basic programming notions in Python, and introduces some of the most useful packages used in social science research. No previous programming experience is required.. Full details	Add event
2 July - 10 August 2018		The Institute of Coding Summer School at the University of Exeter The Institute of Coding (IoC) Summer School at Exeter is an opportunity to enhance your digital skills at a summer school designed to introduce you to the fundamentals of computer programming and social data analytics. The school seeks to attract those undergraduate and postgraduate students who may not yet have had the opportunity to learn these skills (e.g. Humanities and Social Sciences). A desire to challenge yourself and learn to code is the only requirement. A background in maths or statistics is not expected of participants.. Full details	Add event
30 May 2018	15:30	What Can Genetics Tell Us About Education? Dr Emily Smith-Woolley from King's College London is a behavioural geneticist from the group of Robert Plomin at the KCL. They work with the data from the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) to separate genetic and environmental effects on children's outcomes. They've just published a paper in the Science of Learning on the effects of school type on exam performance arguing that superior results of children in selective schools come from the selection of more academically able children rather than school performance (see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-018-0019-8). Emily will present these results as well as a more general framework of how behavioural geneticists study education.. Full details	Add event
16 May 2018	15:30	The Social Stratification of Educational Enjoyment Dr Roxanne Connelly from the University of Warwick is a sociologist working in the area of social stratification. Most educational research is concerned with children's academic outcomes. In this talk Roxanne looks into how much primary school children in the UK actually enjoy learning using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Survey. Full details	Add event
2 May 2018	15:30	Avoiding Bias When Estimating the Consistency and Stability of Value-Added School Effects. As part of the Exeter Q-Step Centre Research Seminar on Education Dr George Leckie for the University of Bristol will talk about value-added school effects (used in many school rankings) and how to estimate them best. George is a statistician and economist from the Centre for Multilevel Modelling, and he's got a lot of experience with working with the National Pupil Database and is a co-chair of the NPD user group.. Full details	Add event
29 March 2018	16:00	Q-Step: Multilevel Modelling In this tutorial, we introduce multilevel models as extensions of regression-type models suited to analyse hierarchical or nested data, such as children's SATs test scores nested within classes or schools, individual survey responses nested within interviewers, or, potentially, any measure taken repeatedly over time. I’ll demonstrate code on the spot in R, so you might find it helpful to bring your laptops (but it’s optional). Full details	Add event
8 March 2018	15:30	Q-Step: Text Analysis - Python tbc. Full details	Add event
6 March 2018	11:30	Q-Step : Agent-based modeling Though models sit at the centre of lines of social inquiry as diverse as game theory, statistical analysis, qualitative analysis, and political philosophy, all involve an attempt to describe core elements of the world in a way that helps us to understand, value, and predict that world. With Agent Based Models, computer simulations of the behaviours of many agents work deductively from simplified assumptions to create dynamic interactions that can be examined over a range of conditions to make inductive arguments about the nature of the world. In this generative reasoning approach, agents with very simple micromotives can lead to complex adaptive systems in which qualitatively different macrobehaviours emerge. How do very simple assumptions about drivers, city dwellers, and voters lead to complex emergent phenomena like traffic jams, housing segregation, and party realignment? In this lecture, I’ll introduce answers to these questions by building models of these problems and highlight tools you can use to develop your own agent based models. Full details	Add event
27 February 2018	11:30	Q-Step : Network Analysis The workshop provides an introduction for beginners to Social Network Analysis. It gives an overview of key concepts needed to design research that looks at social relations (networks) that connect individual units (actors), so that students can apply social network analysis to their own research. The workshop focuses on the description and visualisation of social network data, looking at structural properties of a network, as well as ideas of centrality in the network. To understand the SNA perspective, practical examples are given from academic literature, illustrative graphics from the media, and source material visualised through R. Experience in R is expected although not required. We will use a combination of slides and R code exercise. Full details	Add event
20 February 2018	17:00	Q-Step: Longitudinal Data Analysis In this workshop you will learn about the principles of longitudinal data analysis, when it should be used and the advantages and disadvantages of longitudinal methods. You will also be introduced to event history analysis and learn how to construct a person-year data file. Finally, you will learn to run common hazard models and create a survival curve. The workshop will be taught using STATA software with examples from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). Please note that a prior experience with regression analysis is required. Full details	Add event
20 February 2018	9:30	Technology and Electoral Research: Perspectives from Industry and Academia This conference is the closing event for VOTEADVICE, a four-year research project funded by the European Commission to investigate the impact of new technologies on political behaviour. The scientific objectives of VOTEADVICE have been to produce research related to how new technologies and social media influence political and social behaviour. In order to achieve this aim the Research Network developed and applied techniques for the analysis of non-probability samples, online surveys and experiments and eye tracking tools.. Full details	Add event
6 February 2018	11:30	Q-Step: Data Analysis - Python TBC. Full details	Add event
30 January 2018	11:30	Q-Step : Designing Experiments At the workshop we will consider basic principles of designing field and survey experiments. We will start with discussing the idea of causal inference and randomisation. Then we will review several experimental designs: completely randomised, stratified, paired, cluster randomised, factorial. Next, we will discuss statistical power in experiments and conclude with a review of the methods for the analysis of experimental data, such as ANOVA and linear model. The workshop will be useful for Q-Step undergraduate students planning to use experiments for their dissertations, as well as for postgraduate students.. Full details	Add event
7 December 2017	16:30	Q-Step: Collecting Social Media Data This workshop provides an introduction to the main methods used to access, download and store social media data. You will learn how to use Twitter's APIs to collect tweets and user details, and how to collect Facebook posts and comments. Basic knowledge of programming in Python is required, and participants are required to attend the "Intro to Python" workshop first.. Full details	Add event
30 November 2017	14:30	Q-Step : Designing Experiments At the workshop we will consider basic principles of designing field and survey experiments. We will start with discussing the idea of causal inference and randomisation. Then we will review several experimental designs: completely randomised, stratified, paired, cluster randomised, factorial. Next, we will discuss statistical power in experiments and conclude with a review of the methods for the analysis of experimental data, such as ANOVA and linear model. The workshop will be useful for Q-Step undergraduate students planning to use experiments for their dissertations, as well as for postgraduate students. Full details	Add event
20 November 2017	11:30	Q-Step: Intro to Python Python is increasingly used by social scientists to collect, process and analyse new types of unstructured or semi-structured data, such as online text and social media data. It is a an accessible, yet versatile programming language which is also broadly used for data science and machine learning tasks, combining multiple types of data, simulation and visualization. This workshop provides an introduction to basic programming notions in Python, and introduces some of the most useful packages used in social science research. No previous programming experience is required. NOTE: This workshop is a prerequisite for the following Q-Step workshops (to be offered this and next term): Collecting Social Media Data, Data Analysis in Python, Text Analysis.. Full details	Add event
9 November 2017	16:30	Q-Step: Data visualisation in R We will introduce the common approaches to data visualisation in R, including line / bar charts, scatterplots, histogram and density plots in base R and using the ggplot2 package. We will also discuss the aesthetics, geoms and faceting systems in ggplot2. Please bring your own laptop with R, RStudio, and the following packages installed: "tidyverse", "titanic". Full details	Add event
26 October 2017	16:30	Q-Step: Data management in R In this workshop, we introduce some of the most popular functions and packages for data management/manipulation including fast data cleaning, recording a number of variables simultaneously, aggregating or summarising data by groups, merging tables, reshaping tables. Using an example data set provided on the spot, we will go through (s/t)apply functions, and functions provided by the dplyr package and the data.table package. Participants will be able to use their own laptops during this workshop and receive support with software installation. Full details	Add event
30 June 2017	9:15	Collecting and Analysing Social Media Data This workshop, taught by Prof. Robert Ackland (ANU and Uberlink), provides an introduction to social media analysis using the R package SocialMediaLab. The package provides an easy way to collect text and network data across multiple popular social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram). You will learn how to collect the data, analyse and visualize it, and generate different types of networks for analysis.. Full details	Add event
16 May 2017	11:00	Trump's 2016 Victory: Rethinking Theories of Ad Persuasion Professor Travis Ridout is Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Policy in the School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at Washington State University. He is also co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising. Ridout's research on political campaigns and political advertising has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Communication, Political Behavior, Political Psychology, Annual Review of Political Science, and in several book chapters. Full details	Add event
3 March 2017	9:30	Network Analysis The workshop provides an introduction for beginners to Social Network Analysis. Full details	Add event
24 February 2017	9:30	Analysing Text as Data The workshop will introduce and provide hands on applications of various techniques of content analysis especially focusing on the analysis of texts.. Full details	Add event
17 February 2017	9:30	Data Visualisation in R In this workshop we will introduce you to data visualisation in R with two popular packages, dplyr and ggplot2. We will cover most main types of statistical graphics. Full details	Add event
10 February 2017	9:30	Presenting and Visualising Regression Results This workshop introduces various ways of automating regression output from Stata and R.. Full details	Add event
3 February 2017	9:30	Data Analysis in R Building upon the 'Introduction to Programming in R' and the 'Data Visualisation in R' sessions, this workshop provides a brief introduction to major data analysis topics and their implementation in R. Covered topics include: probability distributions, regression analysis, models for binary and categorical data. Full details	Add event
20 January 2017	9:30	Introduction to R This workshop provides an introduction to basic programming notions and their application in R.. Full details	Add event
9 December 2016	12:30	Qualtrics surveys and survey experiments Students and research staff in the College of Social Sciences and International Studies now have access to the online survey platform Qualtrics. In this tutorial you will learn how to use Qualtrics to design customized surveys and survey experiments, distribute them, collect the data and report the results. Full details	Add event
8 June 2016	13:00	Stephen Greasley and Gabriel Katz: "Estimating the Link between Public Scrutiny and Share Prices" Draft paper for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series: "Public Service Corporations: Estimating the Link between Public Scrutiny and Share Prices". Full details	Add event
2 June 2016	11:30	Sequence Analysis — Alexey Bessudnov This workshop offers an introduction to sequence analysis in social sciences. This type of analysis is applied to longitudinal data to model patterns of transitions between states. The usual applications in social sciences are in life course studies for the analysis of labour market trajectories, family dynamics, and other historical sequences. The workshop use the TraMineR package for R. Full details	Add event
25 May 2016	13:00	Joost van Spanje (VU Amsterdam) "On parrots and pariah: Legal, media and political reactions to anti-immigration parties in Western Europe" Joost will talk about research on legal reactions (eg party bans; hate speech prosecution), media reactions (eg silencing; stigmatizing) and political reactions (eg coopting their policy proposals; cordons sanitaires) to anti-immigration parties in Western Europe, and about their electoral effects. Full details	Add event
18 May 2016	13:00	Catarina Thomson: Title TBC - draft paper discussion Draft paper by Catarina Thomson for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series. Full details	Add event
11 May 2016	13:00	Nicole Bolleyer, Nils Bormann and Felix von Nostitz: "Conflict and Conflict Regulation in Political Parties" Draft paper for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series: "Conflict and Conflict Regulation in Political Parties". Full details	Add event
22 March 2016	10:30	Presenting and Visualising Regression Results — Nils-Christian Bormann This workshop introduces various ways of automating regression output from Stata and R. It will start by covering ways how to automate table creation for Latex and Word. It will then proceed to visualizing marginal effects and predicted probabilities from linear and binary dependent variable regressions and finally discuss visualization of interaction effects. If time permits, we will cover R's advanced plotting and data manipulation packages ggplot2 and dplyr/plyr. Full details	Add event
2 March 2016	13:00	Patricia Correa Vila and Juan Rodriguez-Teruel: "Comparing Incentives and Party Activism in US and Europe: PSOE, PP and the California Democratic Party" Draft paper for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series: ‘Comparing Incentives and Party Activism in US and Europe: PSOE, PP and the California Democratic Party’, by Patricia Correa Vila (Research Fellow, Politics) and Juan Rodriguez-Teruel (Politics, Universitat de València).. Full details	Add event
24 February 2016	13:00	Alexey Bessudnov, Susan Banducci and Dan Stevens: "Childbirths and Political Interest" Draft paper for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series: Alexey Bessudnov (Sociology) and Susan Banducci and Dan Stevens (Politics), ‘Childbirths and Political Interest’. Full details	Add event
17 February 2016	12:00	John Maloney (Economics): "Are Marginals Different?" Draft paper for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series: John Maloney (Economics), ‘Are Marginals Different?’. Full details	Add event
12 February 2016	14:30	Data Analysis in R — Iulia Cioroianu Building upon the "Introduction to Programming in R" session, this workshop provides a brief introduction to major data analysis topics and their implementation in R. Topics covered include: probability distributions, regression analysis, and models for binary and categorical data. Full details	Add event
3 February 2016	13:00	Katya Kolpinskaya (Q-Step, Politics): "Facets of substantive minority representation in Britain" Draft grant proposal for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series: Katya Kolpinskaya (Q-Step, Politics), ‘Facets of substantive minority representation in Britain: Minority interests and their representatives in political and public debate, 1991-2015’. (Grant proposal for the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship). Full details	Add event
22 January 2016	13:30	Introduction to Programming in R — Iulia Cioroianu This workshop provides an introduction to basic programming notions and their application in R. We will start with an overview of R objects and their attributes. You will then learn how to import data into R and perform simple data manipulations. Finally, we will go over a few simple examples of data analysis and visualization and introduce some of the most commonly used R packages. We will be using RStudio, a user-friendly interface to R. Full details	Add event
9 December 2015	13:00	Claudia Zucca (Q-Step, Marie Curie fellow): "Measuring Party Competition through Network Modelling" Draft paper for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series: Claudia Zucca (Q-Step Marie Curie Early Career Researcher), ‘Measuring Party Competition through Network Modelling’. The discussion will be followed by Christmas drinks, 2-3pm in the same room. Full details	Add event
8 December 2015	11:30	Analysing Text as Data — Ekaterina Kolpinskaya This fifth Q-Step workshop of 2015–16 on Applied Data Analysis introduces and provides hands on applications of various techniques of content analysis especially focusing on the analysis of texts. It starts from outlining the key concepts, defining units of analysis and understanding measurement techniques and theoretical approaches. It then moves on to reviewing applications of content analysis to Social Sciences data (e.g., parliamentary records, political manifestos, policy documents). Finally, participants will be provided with textual data to practice the content analysis techniques.Feel free to bring your own documents (any type of text in digitised, preferably .txt, format) to the workshop. Full details	Add event
2 December 2015	12:00	Travis Coan (Q-Step, Politics): "Tracing the Narrative of Hate in the Rising Greek Far-Right" Draft paper for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series: Travis Coan (Q-Step, Politics), co-authoring with Constantine Boussalis (Trinity College Dublin) and Elias Dinas (University of Oxford), ‘Tracing the Narrative of Hate in the Rising Greek Far-Right'. Full details	Add event
1 December 2015	12:30	Network Analysis — Lorien Jasny This fourth workshop of 2015–16 provides an introduction for beginners to Social Network Analysis. It gives an overview of key concepts needed to design research that looks at social relations (networks) that connect individual units (actors), so that students can apply social network analysis to their own research. The workshop focuses on the description and visualisation of social network data, looking at structural properties of a network, as well as ideas of centrality in the network. To understand the SNA perspective, practical examples are given from academic literature, illustrative graphics from the media, and source material visualised through R. Full details	Add event
11 November 2015	16:30	SPSS Intermediate — Katharine Boyd This workshop introduces you to the basics of statistical analysis using SPSS focusing on cross-tabulations and correlations in particular. The workshop is taught at the intermediate level and requires basic knowledge of SPSS or the attendance of SPSS Beginners Workshop. Full details	Add event
4 November 2015	16:30	SPSS Beginners — Katharine Boyd This Q-Step workshop offers a brief guidance on how to get started with SPSS. It reflects on the drawbacks and benefits of the software and explains how to prepare your data to use in SPSS. The workshop then moves on to demonstrate how you can describe the data in SPSS using the 2010 British Election Study data. There are no pre-requisites for taking the workshop, and no prior knowledge of data analysis is assumed. Full details	Add event
4 November 2015	12:00	Nicole Bolleyer and Raimondas Ibenskas (Politics): "New Party Survival in Advanced Democracies 1968-2013" Draft paper for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series: Nicole Bolleyer and Raimondas Ibenskas (Politics), 'Political Parties - Just Electoral Vehicles? New Party Survival in Advanced Democracies 1968-2013'. Full details	Add event
28 October 2015	13:00	Nils-Christian Bormann, HASS Fellow Politics ‘Internal Conflict Diffusion: Revisiting the Conflict Trap’ (an R&R article) Followed by CEMaP Annual Meeting 2-3pm (same room) Draft paper for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series: Nils-Christian Bormann (HASS Fellow, Politics), ‘Internal Conflict Diffusion: Revisiting the Conflict Trap’. Discussion will be followed by CEMaP Annual Meeting, 2-3pm in the same room. Full details	Add event
20 October 2015	12:30	How to Read an Empirical Paper — Gabriel Katz-Wisel Reading empirical articles can be intimidating. The new reader may be daunted by technical jargon, complex methodological procedures and statistical analysis. This workshop guides you through a process to make sense of the typical analysis in an empirical study. Full details	Add event
14 October 2015	13:00	Amy McKay (Politics): "Congruence Among the Policy Agendas of Citizens, Interest Groups, and Governments" Draft grant proposal for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series: Amy McKay (Politics), ‘Distortion: Congruence Among the Policy Agendas of Citizens, Interest Groups, and Governments’. Full details	Add event
30 September 2015	13:00	Gabriel Katz and Katya Kolpinskaya (Politics): "The effect of post-electoral communication frames on attitudes towards government" Draft journal article for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series: Gabriel Katz (Politics) and Katya Kolpinskaya (Politics), ‘The effect of post-electoral communication frames on attitudes towards government: Evidence from a survey experiment after the 2015 British election’. Full details	Add event
16 September 2015	13:00	Iulia Cioroianu (Politics): "Studying the 2015 Elections Using Automated Methods for Visual Content Analysis" Draft grant proposal for discussion, in the CEMaP/Q-Step Cake For Comments series: Iulia Cioroianu (Q-Step, Politics), ‘The Role of Images in Online Political Communication: Studying the 2015 Elections Using New Automated Methods for Visual Content Analysis’ (a grant proposal). Full details	Add event