Institution: see Organisers & Supporters

Programme of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Dr. David Richter, German Institute for Economic Research/DIW Berlin

Date: Thursday, 13/09/18 (09.00–18.00 h)

Max. number of participants: 20

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents:

The course aims to provide an overview of the theoretical basics and empirical evidence related to questionnaire design. The cognitive process of survey responding, challenges of designing effective survey questions including aspects of proper question wording and optimal response formats, as well as pretest techniques for evaluating survey questions will be discussed.

Requirement of students: None.

Recommended literature and pre-readings: None.

You have to register for the 12th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Institution: see Organisers & Supporters

Programme of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Stefan Seth, Research Data Centre (FDZ) of the Federal Employment Agency (BA) at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB)

Date: Thursday, 13/09/18 (09.00–18.00 h)

Max. number of participants: 20

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents:

SAS is a statistical program package widely used in banks, insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical industry, so everyone who wants to become rich is at the right place in this course. SAS is very expensive if used commercially, however, for academic research, it’s free! As SAS is very fast and does not require the data to be loaded into memory (unlike R or Stata), it is particularly well suited to handle huge amounts of data.

The main focus of the course will be data preparation because this is the comparative advantage of SAS (and of the instructor). Therefore we will address the SAS data step in depth. Participants will learn about some SAS procedures for descriptive analyses, and we will get down to the nitty-gritty of reading and writing raw (non-SAS) data sets. Advanced topics like the SAS macro language or hashes will be covered if there is enough time (so most probably not at all).

Requirement of students: Participants should have installed SAS University Edition on their laptops.

Recommended literature and pre-readings: None.

You have to register for the 12th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Institution: see Organisers & Supporters

Programme of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Daniel Schnitzlein Leibnitz University Hannover & German Institute for Economic Research/DIW Berlin

Date: Thursday, 13/09/18 (09.00–18.00 h)

Max. number of participants: 20

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents:

Results of scientific research are often (and increasingly) complex and hard to understand for a non-scientific audience. However, at the same time, the transfer of results from academic research to an outside-academia recipient, for example, politics, private foundations or private firms providing research funding, but also the interested public, gets more and more important.
In this course, participants will learn how to identify, extract, and reduce relevant results from their research and how to prepare them for presentation either in form of a talk or a (policy) report.

Special emphasis is put on how to create easy to understand visualizations of quantitative results that support the transfer of knowledge.

Requirement of students: Basic knowledge on empirical (quantitative) social and economic research is beneficial. Visualization examples are based on Stata and/or R. Code examples will be provided within the lecture.

Recommended literature and pre-readings: None.

You have to register for the 12th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Institution: see Organisers & Supporters

Programme of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Rolf Brühl, ESCP Europe Business School, Berlin

Date: Thursday, 13/09/18 (09.00–18.00 h)

Max. number of participants: 20

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents:

This module intends to increase participants’ awareness of key ontological and methodological issues in social science research and, thus, explores several philosophical issues concerning the nature of social scientific theory. Topics to be covered will include some of the following: paradigms in the social sciences, truth and validity, social ontology and the nature of ‘social facts’, reductionism and methodological individualism, the explanation and interpretation of action, the role of values in social science. Completing this one-day module, participants should have first knowledge of theories and concepts enabling systematic reflection on social science.

Requirement of students: None.

Recommended literature and pre-readings:

• Rosenberg, A. (2014). Philosophy of social science. Boulder, CO: Westview.
• Schurz, G. (2014). Philosophy of science: a unified approach. New York: Routledge.
• Brühl R. (2017). Wie Wissenschaft Wissen schafft:Wissenschaftstheorie und –ethik für die Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften (2nd Ed). Konstanz: UKV/Lucius & Lucius.

You have to register for the 12th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Institution: see Organisers & Supporters

Programme of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Dr. Jonathan Mole, Europa-Universität Flensburg

Date: Thursday, 13/09/18 (09.00–18.00 h)

Max. number of participants: 20

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents:

Writing an academic text is a complex task. It requires knowledge of a range of accepted writing conventions, as well as the ability to construct sentences which are not only idiomatically and grammatically correct but also suitably connected to one another. An awareness of the requirements and a degree of practice are necessary.
This workshop is primarily for people who are in the process of writing an academic text in English – a proposal, abstract, article, thesis etc. It provides the opportunity to obtain individual feedback on a text which you submit prior to the workshop. In the workshop, assistance will be given to enable you to self-correct any issues which have been highlighted (structure, understanding, logic, language etc.). In addition, an overview of the important characteristics of academic English writing will be discussed. If required, exercises will be available to highlight topics such as academic style (formality, impersonal and objective language, passive voice, caution, nominalisation); structure a sentence, paragraph and document level; reporting verbs and their forms; coherence and cohesion; and citation and reference styles.

Requirement of students: Please supply a maximum of 2 pages of text at least two weeks before the workshop begins. English language skills at CEFR level B2/C1 are required.

Recommended literature and pre-reading: None.

You have to register for the 12th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Institution: see Organisers & Supporters

Programme of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Dr. Jonathan Mole, Europa-Universität Flensburg

Date: Monday, 10/09/18 – Wednesday, 12/09/18 (14.30–18.00 h)

Max. number of participants: 20

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents:

Writing an academic text can be a daunting and complex task requiring the knowledge of a range of accepted writing conventions as well as the ability to construct sentences that are idiomatically and grammatically correct. This workshop will take as the starting point the proposals you wrote for your PhD project applications. Individual feedback will be provided on the texts and assistance will be given during the workshop to enable you to self-correct any issues which have been highlighted (structure, understanding, logic, language etc.). Common issues can be discussed and experience shared. Exercise material will be available to show the importance of an awareness of a range of topics including academic style (formality, impersonal and objective language, passive voice, caution, nominalisation); structure at sentence, paragraph and document level; reporting verbs and their forms; coherence and cohesion; and citation and reference styles. Potentially useful links and book recommendations will be provided.

Requirement of students: Please supply your project proposal at least two weeks before the workshop begins.

Recommended literature and pre-reading: None.

You have to register for the 12th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Institution: see Organisers & Supporters

Programme of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Dr. Kamil Marcinkiewicz, University of Hamburg

Date: Monday, 10/09/18 – Wednesday, 12/09/18 (14.30–18.00 h)

Max. number of participants: 20

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents:

The case study research is frequently applied in the social sciences. It is particularly popular among political scientists, especially those specialising in area studies. The ubiquity of the case study research contrasts with the scarcity of theoretical reflection on its core methodological aspects. Also, the benefits of comparative analyses are often underestimated. In this course, participants will have an opportunity to learn more about what the case study research is, what are its weakness and strengths and how should we go about the core question in designing a case study: selection of cases. The course combines lectures with practical exercises and discussion of students’ projects.

Requirement of students: Please bring your laptop computer.

Recommended literature and pre-readings:

• Gerring, J. (2007). Case Study Research: Principles and Practices (pp. 17-63). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• George, A. L., & Bennett, A. (2005). Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (pp. 1-34). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Rueschemeyer, D. (2003). Can One or a Few Cases Yield Theoretical Gains? In J. Mahoney and D. Rueschemeyer (Eds.), Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (pp. 305-337) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hall, P.A. (2008). Systematic Process Analysis: When and How to Use it. European Political Science, 7(3), 304-317.

You have to register for the 12th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Institution: see Organisers & Supporters

Programme of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Dr. Jonas Buche, Leibniz University Hannover

Date: Monday, 10/09/18 – Wednesday, 12/09/18 (14.30–18.00 h)

Max. number of participants: 20

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents:

Since the publication of the seminal work “The Comparative Method” by Charles Ragin in 1987, set-theoretic methods and especially Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) have become a common research strategy in the social sciences. Set-theoretic methods analyse cases with regard to the identification of sufficient and necessary conditions and assume set relations to be equifinal, conjunctural and asymmetric. Not least since so-called fuzzy sets have been introduced to the method, there has been a rising interest in QCA as a welcome alternative to both small-n case studies and large-n statistical analyses. In short, QCA is recommended if ‘if…then’ hypotheses are analysed; if the goal is to derive sufficient and necessary conditions; if a comparison is planned; and if there is a mid-sized number of cases (between 10 and 60+).

The course offers a comprehensive introduction to QCA and is both conceptually and technically oriented. It starts off with an overview of the basics of set theory and demarcates QCA as a case-oriented method from both the quantitative and the interpretive-qualitative research paradigm. Through the notion of necessary and sufficient conditions and of truth tables, the single elements are built into the Truth Table Algorithm. However, this algorithm is not free of problems. Therefore, some pitfalls and strategies on how to overcome them are presented. On the third day, the software tool fsQCA will be introduced and applied to published studies.

Requirement of students: No prior knowledge is required. We will use the software fsQCA2.5 which can be downloaded at www.fsqca.com.

Recommended literature and pre-readings:

• Cebotari, Victor, and Maarten P. Vink (2013). “A Configurational Analysis of Ethnic Protest in Europe.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol. 54(4), 298-324.
• Emmenegger, Patrick. (2011). “Job Security Regulations in Western Democracies. A Fuzzy Set Analysis.” European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 50(3), 336-64.
• Freitag, Markus, and Raphaela Schlicht (2009). “Educational Federalism in Germany. Foundations of Social Inequality in Education.” Governance, Vol. 22(1), 47-72.
• Schneider, Carsten Q./Wagemann, Claudius, 2012. Set-Theoretic Methods for the Social Sciences. A Guide to Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ragin, Charles C., 2008. Redesigning Social Inquiry. Fuzzy Sets and Beyond. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Goertz, Gary/Mahoney, James, 2012. A Tale of Two Cultures: Quantitative and Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Buche, Antje, Jonas Buche, and Markus B. Siewert. “Fuzzy Logic or Fuzzy Application? A Response to Stockemer’s “Fuzzy Set or Fuzzy Logic?”” European Political Science 15(2): 359-378. (see also chapter 4 in Buche 2017).
• Buche, Jonas. 2017. “Assessing the Quality of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) – Evaluation, Improvement, Application”. Hannover: Leibniz Universität.
• Buche, Jonas. 2017b. “Europeanization of Legislative-executive Relations at the Micro Level – Under Which Conditions Do Swedish MPs Interact with Ministerial Officials?” COMPASSS Working Paper Series 2017-87 (see also chapter 6 in Buche 2017).
• Buche, Jonas, and Markus B. Siewert. 2015. “Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in der Soziologie – Perspektiven, Potentiale und Anwendungsbereiche.” Zeitschrift für Soziologie 44 (6):386-406 (see also chapter 2 in Buche 2017).

You have to register for the 12th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.

Institution: see Organisers & Supporters

Programme of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Timo Friedel Mitze, University of Southern Denmark

Date: Monday, 10/09/18 – Wednesday, 12/09/18 (14.30–18.00 h)

Max. number of participants: 20

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS

Language of instruction: English

Contents:

‘Researchers are increasingly aware of the fact that ‘space matters’. The goal of the applied course is to equip participants with essential knowledge on methods and tools currently available in the field of spatial data analysis with a focus on ‘Spatial Statistics and Spatial Econometrics’. Besides presenting the general logic and methodological foundations of this research field, a distinct focus is set on developing skills to work with applied examples using the software package STATA. This shall enable participants to build up competencies for conducting own empirical projects in the research field.

The course is structured as follows: After a brief introduction of the historical evolution of spatial data analysis, different research settings in economics and related research fields are outlined, which call for the explicit use of spatial estimation techniques. Following this introduction, the concept of the spatial weighting matrix is introduced and statistical approaches to measure and visualize the degree of spatial dependence for a variable under study are presented.

Moving from univariate to multivariate modelling techniques, the course then presents estimation techniques for spatial models and applies this theoretical knowledge to hands-on applications for different datasets. Finally, as an outlook on future research possibilities, state-of-the-art concepts such as spatial panel data models will be presented.

At the end of the course, participants shall be able to detect the degree of spatial dependence in the available data and judge which spatial econometric models are most appropriate given the research question at hand. Moreover, participants will acquire the ability to estimate such models using the software package STATA.

Datasets, STATA do- and ado-files will be provided ahead of the course.”

Requirement of students: Basic knowledge in Stata. You may watch this online tutorial.

Pre-readings:

• LeSage, J. (2008). An Introduction to Spatial Econometrics. Revue d’économie industrielle, 123(3), 19-44.

Recommended literature:

• Anselin, L. (2010). Thirty years of spatial econometrics. Papers in Regional Science, 89(1), 3-25.
• Sarafoglu, N., & Paelinck, J. (2008). On Diffusion of Ideas in the Academic World: The Case of Spatial Econometrics. Annals of Regional Science, 42(2), 487-500.

You have to register for the 12th International Research Workshop to participate in this course.