400009 SE Seminar for Doctoral Candidates (2010W)

3.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 40 - Doktoratsstudium Sozialwissenschaften

Continuous assessment of course work

Begin: 11.10 End: 22.11, Mondays 10-14
Venue: KR A NIG

NB: Course is open for both MA and PhD students at the Faculty of Social Sciences
NO SIGN UP THROUGH UNIVIS!
To sign up please send an email to martin.hansen univie.ac.at - with your name and what you study.

Details

Language: English

Lecturers

Martin Ejnar Hansen

Classes

Currently no class schedule is known.

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Many interesting social science questions are problematic to answer with the most widely used statistical technique, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Questions like numbers of visits to the doctor or military interventions violates the assumption of a continuous dependent variable required for OLS. Thus, different approaches are needed to answer such questions.

By the end of this course the participants will be able to construct and interpret models for count data, events and panels. Achieving a firm understanding of the assumptions and the interpretation of the models will be the target. The ability to work independently with the model and to evaluate critically such models used in scholarly journals will be among the main concepts.

The course will cover these models in five sessions. A detailed lecture plan will be available early September. Broadly, the first session will be used to refresh the regression assumptions. The next two sessions will deal with counts and events. The final two sessions will have panels as the topic.

Training in quantitative methods minimum up to basic OLS regression is required for this course.

Assessment and permitted materials

10-15 page problem-set paper on main concepts and interpretation of results, assigned after the last class OR 10-15 page paper on main concepts, challenges and interpretation of results based on the perceived topic of the Masters' thesis. To be handed in by 15 January 2011 (60%)
- Three homework and problem sets, to be submitted at three set dates (30%)
- Continuous assessment of class participation (10%)

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Examination topics

Each class will be a mixture of short lectures and computer exercises. Class exercises and homework will be carried out using Stata. This programme will be introduced in the first session, and no prior knowledge is required.