QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS
SPRING 2015
Please note: This page is archived from the last time I taught this course.
For materials for current courses, please go to my teaching page.
Welcome to the course page for RPOS/RPAD 517, Quantitative Research Methods!
This page contains supplemental information and links to course materials.
Syllabus
karreth517.pdfVideos, tutorials, and assignments
| Day | Videos | Tutorials | Assignments | Other materials |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Welcome | Intro to R (R code) | Day 1 | Assignment template | Questions & models | rpos517_Day1_A1.R | Computing | rpos517_Day1_NB1.Rmd |
| 2 | 1, 2, 3 | Intro to Data (PDF, R code) | Day 2 | |
| 3 | 1, 2 | Probability & Distributions (PDF, R code) | Day 3 | |
| 4 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | Inference (PDF, R code) | Day 4 | |
| 5 | Read OI chs. 5-6 | Assocations (PDF, R code) | Day 5 | |
| 6 | 1, 2, 3, 4 | Bivariate Regression (PDF, R code) | Day 6 | |
| 7 | Read "Tidy Data" | Data management (PDF, R code) | Day 7 | |
| 8 | 1, 2 | Multiple regression (PDF, R code) | Day 8 | |
| 9 | Readings only | Diagnostics I (PDF, R code) | Day 9 | |
| 10 | 1 | Diagnostics II (PDF, R code) | Day 10 | |
| 11 | Read Brambor et al. | Interaction terms (PDF, R code) | Day 11 | Marginal effects plot |
| 12 | Readings only | Model checks (PDF, R code) | Day 12 | |
| 13 | Readings only | GLMs (PDF, R code) | Day 13 (optional) | |
| 14 | 1 (optional) | Grouped data (PDF, R code) | Stata notes (zip) |
Replication assignment
See the detailed instructions. This assignment has three parts: a replication plan outline (template), a replication script (template), and a replication memo (template).Research plan
This research plan is similar to the type of document you would submit to pre-register a study at a journal. See issue 1, volume 21 of Political Analysis and the call for proposals for a forthcoming issue of Comparative Political Studies for details on pre-registrations. Your document needs to contain a summary of your research question, preliminary answer(s), at least one testable hypothesis, research design, and a data analysis plan. Materials: instructions, and guidelines for reviews.Access to readings
Please see Blackboard for all readings that are not accessible online via Google Scholar from the UAlbany campus network.Helpful R functions
R functions to help with assignments in this course are posted on my Github page.In addition, we use the following packages to facilitate processing output from your data analysis for research papers. Have a look at the documentation and vignettes for these packages:
- texreg for automatically creating publication-ready tables
- knitr for combining data analysis and write-up
- dplyr for managing and reshaping data
- DAMisc for various helpful functions
- ggplot2 for plotting data and various quantities of interest