Category Archives: IRWS Courses 2010

Courses during the International Research Workshop 2010

Analysing Panel Data

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Toben Dall Schmidt (SDU Sonderburg) tbc

Date:
07.10.2010, 14:00 – 17:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 25

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents:
Panel data has become popular due to their very specific structure and associated advantages. This module will introduce these basic structures and offer some first insights into the different standard estimation methods available to use panel data for analysis – the most two most common being the fixed effects models and the random effects models. In terms of advantages, the module will offer a discussion of the properties of panel data in allowing for unobservable heterogeneity, but it will also point to some of the caveats of using panel data, e.g. attrition problem in survey data. A final issue in the module will be testing procedures to allow for a selection between different estimation methods for panel data. The module will therefore offer a basic introduction into the essence of panel data analysis.

You have to register for the 4th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Introduction to MaxQDA for Case Studies

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Heiko Grunenberg (Deutsches Jugend Institut München)

Date:
07.10.2010, 14:00 – 17:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 20

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents:
This workshop is directly affiliated to the course “Case Study Research” with Peter Eberl. We want to see, how the ideas and approaches of “Case Study Research” could be transacted with a software of qualitative research like MAXqda.

It is not necessary to have deep knowledge about MAXqda, but please have a look at http://www.maxqda.com to understand the basic steps of computer assisted qualitative research.

You have to register for the 4th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Case Study Research

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Peter Eberl (University of Kassel)

Date:
04.10.2010, 14:00 – 17:30
05.10.2010, 14:00 – 17:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 20

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents:
Robert Yin a famous researcher in the field defines the case study research method as an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context; when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident; and in which multiple sources of evidence are used.

Case study research can be applied in a qualitative or quantitative research design. Therefore, it can be used for theory building or theory testing. However, case studies are the predominant research design for theory building in management research. Theory building can be either the development of a new theory or the refinement of an existing one. Thus, in the field of management case studies are commonly used as an empirical framework for a qualitative research approach. Accordingly, the workshop is focused on qualitative case study designs. The following issues are addressed:

  • Differences between quantitative and qualitative research designs
  • Research questions for case studies
  • Case selection and data gathering
  • Data analysis and generalization
  • Qualitative criteria for good case studies

Publishing case studies:
Students should prepare the following article for in-class-discussion: Ravasi, D./Schultz, M.: Responding to Organizational Threads: Exploring the Role of Organizational Culture, in: Academy of Management Journal 2006: 433-458.

Further recommended readings:

Eisenhardt, K.: Building Theories from Case Study Research, in: Academy of Management Review 1989: 532-550.

Flyvbjerg, B.: Five Misunderstandings About Case‐Study‐research, in: Qualitative Inquiry 2006, p. 219 ‐ 244

Yin, R.: Case Study Research: Design and Methods, Thousand Oaks, 3ed. 2003

You have to register for the 4th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Data Analysis with Stata (Intermediates)

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Andrea Schäfer (University of Bremen)

Date:
04.10.2010, 14:00 – 17:30
05.10.2010, 14:00 – 17:30
07.10.2010, 14:00 – 17:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 25

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents: n.s.

You have to register for the 4th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Introduction to the SOEP

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Elke Holst (SOEP at DIW) and Andrea Schäfer (University of Bremen)

Date:
04.10.2010, 14:00 – 17:30
05.10.2010, 14:00 – 17:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 25

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents:
The Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) is a longitudinal study of private households in Germany. The panel provides information on all household members and was started in 1984. In 2008, there were more than 11,000 households, and about 20,000 persons sampled. Some of the many topics include household composition, occupational biographies, employment, earnings, health, well being, integration, values, lifestyles, and personality. The course gives an overview of the data structure and the research designs facilitated by longitudinal household studies that go beyond conventional surveys (household analysis, intergenerational analysis, life course research, etc.). In hands-on sessions using Stata, the course provides an applied introduction into the data retrieval, the construction of longitudinal data files, and illustrates some exemplary analyses.

You have to register for the 4th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Questionnaire Design

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Juergen H. P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik (GESIS)
Prof. Dr. Dagmar Krebs (University of Gießen)
Dr. Natalja Menold (GESIS)

Date:
04.10.2010, 09:00 – 12:30
05.10.2010, 09:00 – 12:30
07.10.2010, 09:00 – 12:30
08.10.2010, 09:00 – 12:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: n.s.

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents:
The lectures deal with the basic principles which have been established in the best practice of questionnaire design. The theoretical background and current state of research will be demonstrated on examples and practical exercises.

1. Cognitive process and cognitive pretests: Monday, 4 October, 9 – 12.30

For the beginning the cognitive process in survey responding, including comprehension, retrieval, judgement and formatting response will be presented. For each of these phases the demands for questionnaire design related to the questions about attitudes, opinions and behavior will be explicated. It will be shown, how cognitive pretest techniques (think aloud, probing, confidence rating, paraphrasing) can help to detect the problems in questionnaires, which were related to the cognitive burden of the respondents.

2. Context effects and question wording: Tuesday, 5 October, 9 – 12.30

This section deals with the impact of situational context given in questionnaires on judgements/answers. Regarding the principles of question wording topics such as to phrase the questions, usage of terms and problems with hypothetical, suggestive, negative and double-barreled questions were attended. For each of the principles examples of problems and their solutions will be given.

3. Constructing of optimal answer formats: Thursday, 7 October, 9 – 12.30

Constructing of optimal answer formats due the reliability and validity of questions includes topics such as number of scale points, midpoint, usage of unipolare and bipolare scales, labels of scale points, ascending and descending sequences. Related topics are handling of open and closed questions and usage of non-opinion filters. The problems and their solutions are demonstrated with help of examples and exercises.

4. Collection of sociodemographic data: Friday, 8 October, 9 – 12.30

The fourth part of this lesson demonstrate how to harmonise demographic and socio-economic variables in cross-national comparative survey research. Demographic and socio-economic variables describe the context in which a person is acting. In cross-national comparable research standardised instruments or indices exist only for a very small group of variables. Aside from these instruments there are rules for developing further measurement instruments for measuring socio-demographic variables in cross-national research.

You have to register for the 4th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Qualitative Inquiry and Content Analysis with MAXQDA

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Heiko Grunenberg (Deutsches Jugendforschungsinstitut)

Date:
07.10.2010, 09:00 – 12:30
08.10.2010, 09:00 – 12:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 20

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents:
MAXqda is a software to analyse textual data in a qualitative (but also quantitative) way. The course provides a basic introduction into the logic of the program and its broad possibilities. The goal is to enable you to use this tool accordingly to your own method of analysis. For this reason, everybody can practice our working-steps at an own Computer. We will start at the very beginning and learn about the basic features of the program such as preperation and import of texts, basic analysis strategies and creation of codes, memos and variables. After this, we will focus on anaylsis strategies, simple and complex text retrivals. At the end, we will take a short excusion into the quantitative content analysis of counting and numbers.

You have to register for the 4th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Qualitative (Expert) Interviews

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Heiko Grunenberg (Deutsches Jugend Institut München)

Date:
04.10.2010, 09:00 – 12:30
05.10.2010, 09:00 – 12:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 20

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents:
The workshop addresses participants who are quite unexperienced in procedures of conducting qualitative interviews. We want to do some exercises in the theory and the practice of interviewing. Thus, we want to see: What are the main postulates in this kind of qualitative research and what are the most frequent mistakes?

At the first, we will build are theoretical basement. What are the characteristics of qualitative and quantitative interviewing? You will learn about the different kinds of interviews and the variety of questions. (This part is hold in German, because it depends on the grammar of every language!) Furthermore, the course covers a broader view of the specifics of interviews with so called experts. You will practice to conduct own “public” interviews based on your research and will collect several routine in conducting qualitative interviews.

You have to register for the 4th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Data Analysis with R – Reproducible Research

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Detlef Steuer (HSU Hamburg)

Date:
04.10.2010, 09:00 – 12:30
05.10.2010, 09:00 – 12:30
07.10.2010, 09:00 – 12:30
08.10.2010, 09:00 – 12:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 20

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English/German (depending on participants)

Contents:
Starting with a basic level introduction to R and its concepts the course will cover typical problems arising in research using statistical tools. Focus will be on the tool R itself, not on the underlying statistics. Nevertheless procedures for descriptive statistics, regression, and time series analysis methods will be given in the examples. Following a ‘natural’ workflow for statisticians the course will cover reading (and cleaning) data, generating graphs and reports, defining functions for repetitive work and keeping research reproducible.

You have to register for the 4th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Teaching Skills: How to Implement Activating Methods Appropriately

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Verena Brenner (Self-Employed Trainer) & Tatjana Reiber (HSU Hamburg)

Date: 06.10.2010, 09:00 – 17:30

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 20

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: German

Contents:
Although independence and personal initiative are considered key competencies in academia, teaching at university level does often amount to the transfer of knowledge from an expert (the lecturer) to a passively absorbing audience (the students). Participants of this course will get to know various activating methods and teaching strategies, which encourage students to study autonomously and self-determined. A strong focus will be set on the appropriate use of these methods: for which objectives, in which course context and for which target group can a method be applied? Furthermore, participants will have time and opportunity to practice the instruction of several methods.

You have to register for the 4th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.