"Multivariate Models for Social Scientists
and Policy Analysts: Choices, Interventions, Dynamics"
A Workshop with Dr. Harold Clarke and Dr. Guy Whitten

Workshop description

This five-day workshop, offered through the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research, is co-taught by Dr. Harold Clarke and Dr. Guy D. Whitten. They will teach students how to conduct multivariate analyses of social, economic and political data. Several valuable tools for academic researchers in the social sciences and analysts in the public and private sectors will be considered.

This workshop will first focus on discrete choice models, including the mixed logit model for analyzing factors affecting choices individuals make in social, economic and political environments. The workshop will then consider time series methods for studying policy interventions and the dynamics of policy outcomes.

Topics covered include ARIMA models for interventions and forecasting, error correction models of cointegrated processes, dynamic panel models and ARCH models of volatility and risk. Assuming only familiarity with the standard OLS regression model, the course emphasizes practical applications with real data and students will learn how to use major statistical software packages such as Stata, R and Rats in their research. Students are invited to bring their own data sets to lab sessions.