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Hello/Bonjour,
We would like to draw your attention on 3 particularly innovative methods
courses which will be offered at the second edition of the ECPR Summer
School in Methods and Techniques (SSMT) in Ljubljana (Slovenia), 19 July -
4 August 2007 -- home page at :
http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/events/summerschools/ljubljana/index.aspx
These 3 courses are a "premiere" in terms of teaching offer as full course
in an international Summer School. Each one of them provides interactive
training is some particularly innovative currently developing methodology
(or set of methodologies) and is potentially useful in a broad range of
social scientific disciplines and fields :
1/ Online Research Methods (Prof. Katja Lozar Manfreda and Dr. Bojana Lobe)
(course nr 16)
Short outline : The course deals with the challenge of using new
information- communication technologies (ICTs) for data collection
purposes, which have become essential for empirical research across many
disciplines. Online research methods are essentially facilitators of
'traditional' methods modified in such a way that can be used in a number
of online venues, such as email, chat rooms, web pages, various forms of
instant messaging and other applications provided by the internet. They can
be used for search and analysis of secondary data and for primary data
collection. Methods and techniques such as web surveys, online focus
groups, online in-depth interviews, and virtual ethnography, are examined
in detail. Methodological as well as practical questions of using online
research methods, including introduction of possible software, are addressed.
2/ Temporality and sequence analysis (Prof. Larry Griffin) (course nr 17)
Because many questions in political science and sociology are intrinsically
temporal in nature, social scientists should be able to "think temporally"
when conducting their craft. Those who take time seriously do so in two
distinct ways: they inferentially capitalize on "time-as-context" and they
analyze "time-as-sequence." This course is designed to help students
develop the facility of thinking temporally (in both senses of the term)
and then master several analytic procedures (and the associated computer
software) that permit sophisticated, formal analysis of time-as-sequence,
"event-structure analysis" (ESA) and optimal matching strategies. To
facilitate these objectives, students will analyze "real events" with ESA.
The instructor will provide several examples for analysis-sequences
depicting the formation of a largely African American trade union in the
American South in the 1940s and seqeunces depicting the political
disfranchisement of African Americans in the same region around the turn of
the 20th century. Students are expected to construct their own (simplified)
narratives of an event of interest to them and, with the assistance of the
instructor, analyze it with ESA.
3/ Quantitative Narrative Analysis (Prof. Roberto Franzosi) (course nr 11)
The course aims to provide an introduction to the quantitative analysis of
text data, narrative data in particular. Two types of quantitative
approaches to text will be illustrated: traditional content analysis - in
its thematic and referential variants - and narrative analysis (but
narrative analysis will be the main focus of the course). Through a mixture
of lectures and labs, students will be taught both the theoretical and
practical aspects of quantitative textual analysis. Lab work will rely on
the specialized software PC-ACE (Program for Computer-Assisted Coding of
Events), freely available at www.pc-ace.com. Students will be introduced to
the basic language and issues of quantitative textual analysis (coding
categories, coding schemes, coders, inter-coder reliability, themes,
references, frames, story grammars, sampling). The course also aims to show
students what they can do with these types of data, beyond traditional
statistical analyses (in particular, network models and Geographic
Information System analyses).
More details on these courses to be found at :
http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/events/summerschools/ljubljana/courses.aspx
Feel free to forward this information on your lists,
Best regards,
Profs. Benoit Rihoux & Bernhard Kittel
Academic convenors
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Benoit RIHOUX
Professeur - Professor
Centre de Politique Comparee (CPC) /
Unite de Science Politique et de Relations Internationales (SPRI)
Universite catholique de Louvain - UCL
1/7 Place Montesquieu
B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve / Belgique - Belgium
T : + 32 10 47 41 90 (41 57)
F : + 32 10 47 46 03
Mail - courriel : [log in to unmask]
Website : via http://www.uclouvain.be/pols.htm and
http://www.spri.ucl.ac.be/presentation/membres/RIHOUX/rihoux.htm
COMPASSS Resource Website : http://www.compasss.org
2nd ECPR Summer School in Methods and Techniques,
Ljubljana, 19 July - 4 August 2007 :
http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/events/summerschools/ljubljana/index.htm
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