The Australian Society for Quantitative Political Science (ASQPS) and the ANU School of Politics and International Relations are proud to offer quantitative methods training opportunities for PhD students and early career researchers.

Workshop #1: Using R for Research and Data Visualisation | Dr Shaun Ratcliff | 9:00 - 12:00

R is excellent for conducting simple yet effective analyses and visualisation of data. The course starts covers how to access data in R, calculate descriptive statistic and plot your results.

Some initial material will be provided to help you install R and get you started before the workshop. We will begin the morning covering loading and basic analysis together. Then in small groups we will work on different tracks depending on your previous experience. Options will cover one of three topics:

1. Descriptive analysis and visualisation.
2. Linear regression.
3. Spatial analysis of election results using interactive maps.

This workshop will also provide those with limited experience with R a good lead-in to the second workshop for the day.

About the presenter:

Shaun Ratcliff is a lecturer in political science at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the use of quantitative methods and survey data to understand public opinion, political behaviour and the role of parties in both the United States and Australia. In particular he is interested in how these have changed over time. Shaun has a background working in politics and government relations, and has consulted for federal election campaigns.

Register here.

Workshop #2: An Introduction to quantitative text analysis using R and quanteda | Prof Ken Benoit | 1:00 - 4:00

Fast, flexible and scaleable text analysis for social science is possible using the R language and the quanteda family of packages. In this tutorial I will provide an overview of the language’s capabilities for natural language processing and text analysis, using a package (quanteda) that I authored. The tutorial will provide an introduction to and survey of quanteda’s capabilities, and provide suggestions for future learning in this area.

About the presenter:

Ken Benoit has published extensively on quantitative methodology, especially quantitative text analysis applications to study politics. He leads serval large software development projects in natural language processing and text analysis, including the R package quanteda: Quantitative Analysis of Textual Data. His research encompasses party competition, coalition governments, legislative politics, and electoral systems. He was a co-founder and Associate Editor of Political Science Research and Methods, the journal of the European Political Science Association, and currently serves as an associate editor for the American Political Science Review. He has held positions at Trinity College Dublin and is also currently Professor of Quantitative Social Research Methods at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Register here.