Category Archives: IRWS

International Research Workshop

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.

Multilevel Modeling

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Roel de Jong (University of Hamburg)

Date: 06.10.2010, 09:00 – 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:
Many research designs in the social, medical and biological sciences yield data that have a hierarchical, nested or clustered structure. Examples include pupils within classes, children within families, occasions within an individual, experiments within batches, tests within laboratories, and so on. Classic statistical techniques fail to take into account that observations from the same cluster are likely to be dependent on each other, and are therefore not suited to analyze such data. Multilevel models have been developed over the last 20 years as an alternative, and are now the de-facto standard for the analysis of data with these complex patterns of variability.

In this course, you will learn :

  • About the structure of multilevel models.
  • How to ascertain the degree to which the observations of the sample are dependent.
  • How to specify and fit multilevel models using statistical software.
  • How to perform statistical tests relevant to the hypotheses at hand.

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

Network Analysis

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Anja Iseke (University of Paderborn)

Date: 06.10.2010, 09:00 – 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:
This course will familiarize students with basic concepts in social network analysis. Topics include handling network data, introduction to network analysis software (UCINET and Netdraw), centrality and prestige in networks, subgroup analysis, and roles and positions. This is an applied course that will require students to test and analyze social networks of employees in a high-tech organization.

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

Data Analysis with Stata (Beginners)

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Tobias Gramlich (University of Duisburg-Essen)

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 2009

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

Contents:
Stata is a statistical program package widely used (not only) in the social and economical sciences; it is used for data management, statistical graphics and analysis of quantitative data. Statistical concepts will not be part of the course, so participants should have some very basic knowledge of statistics. The course should enable participants to prepare their data for analysis, perform adequate analysis using a statistical computer program and to document these tasks to keep them reproducible.

For Beginners with No or Very Little Knowledge of the Program!

Course Topics cover:

  • “What You Type is What You Get”: Basic stata Command syntax
  • Getting (and Understanding) Help within stata: stata Bulit-in Help System
  • Basic Data Management: Load and Save stata Datasets, Generate and Manipulate Variables, Describe and Label Data and Variables, Perform Basic uni- and bivariate Analyses, Change the Structure of your Data
  • Basic stata Graphics: Scatterplot, Histogram, Bar Chart
  • Working with “Do-” and “Log-” Files

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

Structural Equation Modeling with Amos

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Volker Müller-Benedict and Katja Spanier (University of Flensburg)

Date: 06.10.2010, 09:00 a.m. – 17:30 p.m.

Room: n.s.

Max. number of participants: 20

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS 2010

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

Contents:
Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a statistical methodology that takes a confirmatory approach to the analysis of a strucutral theory bearing on some phenomenon. Typically, the structural relations can be modeled pictorially to enable a clearer conceptualization of the theory under study. The course introduces into the basic concepts of SEM and into the program package AMOS, which is widely used to graph and to analyze strucutral models. Data of different social areas will be used as examples.

Preconditions:  Basic knowledge of SPSS

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

(Multi-Value) Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Institution: see Organisers & Acknowledgements

Program of study: International Research Workshop

Lecturer: Lasse Cronqvist (University of Trier)

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: 16

Semester periods per week: n.s.

Credit Points: 5 CP for participating in the whole IRWS 2010

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

Contents:
Configurational Comparative Methods (CCM) are increasingly in social science research. The workshop will introduce to these methods mainly on focusing on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). We will first introduce the conceptional basics of QCA and then looking at different refinements. Various applications of CCM will be studied and the software used for QCA will be introduced. Finally, current developments in CCM research are briefly presented.

The software introduced in this course is only available for Windows OS:
Tool for Small-N Analysis – Tosmana – http://www.tosmana.net/

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

Report on the Third International Research Workshop "Methods for PhD", October 4–9, 2009, near Flensburg

For the third time, from October 4–9, 2009, the International Research Workshop (IRWS) took place at the Akademie Sankelmark near Flensburg and at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) in Sonderburg/Denmark. Again it was a great success, with well over 70 participants from 25 different universities and research institutions in Germany, Denmark, Austria, and Italy. The individual workshops were aimed at doctoral level students and young scholars from the social and economic sciences, and were offered in parallel morning and afternoon sessions. The workshop was organized with the aim of promoting young researchers by the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the Helmut Schmidt University of Hamburg (Wenzel Matiaske and Simon Fietze) and received financial support from SOEP/DIW Berlin, the University of Flensburg, the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), the University of Hamburg, the Leuphana University Lüneburg and the Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg (HSU).
The kick-off for the workshop was the traditional Sunday Evening Event. This year the workshop started with the movie “Kitchen Stories” (Comedy, Drama by Bent Hamer, Norway 2003). It was a good introduction to a research and methods workshop for PhD students: the movie is about eighteen observers sent out to a rural district of Norway to map out the kitchen routines of single men. The researchers sat in special strategically placed chairs in each kitchen. It shows in an amusing way how research through observation works and what obstacles can arise.
The general focus of this year’s workshop was network analysis. One day of the workshop included courses on the following topics: Network Analysis (Mark Trappmann, Institute for Labour Research & Anja Iseke, University of Paderborn), Introductory and Advanced Use of the Statistics Software STATA (Tobias Gramlich, University of Duisburg-Essen & Andrea Schäfer, University of Bremen) and the freeware program R (Detlef Steuer, HSU). Further courses included an Introduction to the SOEP (Elke Holst, DIW Berlin/SOEP & Andrea Schäfer, University of Bremen), Analysing Panel Data (Nisar Ahmad, University of Aarhus), Case Studies (Alex Pedrosa, SDU), Introduction to Qualitative Interview Methods (Ralph Kattenbach, University of Hamburg), Qualitative Inquiry and Content Analysis with MAXQDA (Heiko Grunenberg, Leuphana University Lüneburg). Towards the middle of the workshop, it became even more international: about 40 kilometers away at the University of Southern Denmark in Sonderburg/Denmark, courses were offered in Handling Missing Data (Martin Spieß, University of Hamburg), Writing a Research Proposal (Ulrike Pospiech, University of Duisburg-Essen & Marion Hartung, HSU) and Structural Equation Modelling with Amos (Volker Müller-Benedict & Katja Spanier, University of Flensburg).
Next workshop October 3-8, 2010
The next International Research Workshop will take place from October 3–8, 2010.

For the third time, from October 4–9, 2009, the International Research Workshop (IRWS) took place at the Akademie Sankelmark near Flensburg and at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) in Sonderburg/Denmark. Again it was a great success, with well over 70 participants from 25 different universities and research institutions in Germany, Denmark, Austria, and Italy. The individual workshops were aimed at doctoral level students and young scholars from the social and economic sciences, and were offered in parallel morning and afternoon sessions. The workshop was organized with the aim of promoting young researchers by the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the Helmut Schmidt University of Hamburg (Wenzel Matiaske and Simon Fietze) and received financial support from SOEP/DIW Berlin, the University of Flensburg, the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), the University of Hamburg, the Leuphana University Lüneburg and the Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg (HSU).

The kick-off for the workshop was the traditional Sunday Evening Event. This year the workshop started with the movie “Kitchen Stories” (Comedy, Drama by Bent Hamer, Norway 2003). It was a good introduction to a research and methods workshop for PhD students: the movie is about eighteen observers sent out to a rural district of Norway to map out the kitchen routines of single men. The researchers sat in special strategically placed chairs in each kitchen. It shows in an amusing way how research through observation works and what obstacles can arise.

The general focus of this year’s workshop was network analysis. One day of the workshop included courses on the following topics: Network Analysis (Mark Trappmann, Institute for Labour Research & Anja Iseke, University of Paderborn), Introductory and Advanced Use of the Statistics Software STATA (Tobias Gramlich, University of Duisburg-Essen & Andrea Schäfer, University of Bremen) and the freeware program R (Detlef Steuer, HSU). Further courses included an Introduction to the SOEP (Elke Holst, DIW Berlin/SOEP & Andrea Schäfer, University of Bremen), Analysing Panel Data (Nisar Ahmad, University of Aarhus), Case Studies (Alex Pedrosa, SDU), Introduction to Qualitative Interview Methods (Ralph Kattenbach, University of Hamburg), Qualitative Inquiry and Content Analysis with MAXQDA (Heiko Grunenberg, Leuphana University Lüneburg). Towards the middle of the workshop, it became even more international: about 40 kilometers away at the University of Southern Denmark in Sonderburg/Denmark, courses were offered in Handling Missing Data (Martin Spieß, University of Hamburg), Writing a Research Proposal (Ulrike Pospiech, University of Duisburg-Essen & Marion Hartung, HSU) and Structural Equation Modelling with Amos (Volker Müller-Benedict & Katja Spanier, University of Flensburg).

Next workshop October 3-8, 2010

The next International Research Workshop will take place from October 3–8, 2010.

Workshop Porgramme online!

The workshop programme is online now. The workshop folder gives you an overview over the courses and schedule of the 3rd International Research Workshop – 4 – 9 October 2009 at the Akademie Sankelmark (Germany) and University of Southern Denmark (Denmark):

Workshop Folder

Workshop Poster

You are welcome to forward this message to colleagues and interested scientists.

For any questions don’t hesitate to contact us.

Sincerly,
Simon Fietze
Christian Reichl