August 25, 2009Session 1aSlide 1 PSC 5940: Workshop on Quantitative Research Session 1 Fall, 2009

August 25, 2009Session 1aSlide 2 Motivation: this course is designed to advance your capabilities to analyze empirical data –The workshop approach Objective: to develop your skills through writing a publishable, quantitative paper on partisanship and public policy What we’ll cover (after a very brief review): –Part 1: regression and structural models in R A brief excursion into partial regression coefficients –Part 2: partisanship and policy attitudes The literature: your jobs Workshop data and R –Part 3: quantitative analysis and paper writing

August 25, 2009Session 1aSlide 3 The role of statistical analysis Ingredients of strong empirical research –Theory  claims for policy (and counter-claims) –Hypotheses  measurement  analysis –Findings  Back to theory… –The importance of the story-line Characterizing data –Data Quality: Valid? Reliable? Relevant? Appropriate model design and execution –Are statistical models appropriate to test hypotheses? –Are models appropriately specified? –Do data conform to statistical assumptions?

August 25, 2009Session 1aSlide 4 How to work this class Use the webpage – –Click hereClick here Readings: The primary textbooks: Fox and Hamilton –available from Amazon.com Questions: Bring ‘em to class, office hours R: Download it and use it a lot –Why R? –Lab availability –It is FREE and comprehensive –Strategies in the use of R Workshop ethos: free-riders really suck

August 25, 2009Session 1aSlide 5 Class Exams Two Exams –Usually 4 days to complete –Characteristics and Grading Criteria Connection to theory Clear hypotheses Appropriate statistical analyses Clear and succinct explanations Class data will be provided National Security surveys (NS09) Energy and Environment survey (EE09)

August 25, 2009Session 1aSlide 6 Workshop Research Focus Review National Security 2009 survey questions Review Energy/Environment 2009 survey questions We’ll download them from the archive Carefully evaluate distributions of beliefs; policy preferences Hypothesize about factors influencing public beliefs about security and environmental policy: Role of partisanship (nominal, scales…) Role of culture or “world view” (egalitarianism, etc) Perceived risks, appropriate policy instruments Beliefs, policy strategies…

August 25, 2009Session 1aSlide 7 BREAK

August 25, 2009Session 1aSlide 8 Getting and Using R Downloading R –Use the CRAN website –Downloading “packages” Using the Class “R-Wiki” Finding commands and script Loading packages Finding class data and codebooks National Security surveys (NS09) Energy and Environment survey (EE09)

August 25, 2009Session 1aSlide 9 Basic Programming in R Using the R command interface History and text files Loading data EE09<-read.csv(open.file(),header=T) “fixing” data Strategies for data management Basic R commands summary(e8_worry) hist(e8_worry, col="red") hist(e126b_pa, col="red")

August 25, 2009Session 1aSlide 10 For Next Week Download both EE09 and NS09 datasets Review codebooks Open datasets Resave as “.csv” files Summarize for each dataset Partisanship breakdown Gender breakdown Build “history” files for opening each file Review OLS derivation Critical assumptions Definition of b 0 and b 1-k