Categorical Data Analysis
From 29 June to 12 July the HSE Laboratory of Comparative Social Research (LCSR) is holding the Fourth International Summer School on Categorical Data Analysis in Zelenogorsk in the suburbs of St Petersburg. This year academics have come both from the Russian regions and from abroad — CIS, Germany, Israel, Romania and the USA.
The LCSR 2014 summer school is focusing on different methods of analysing categorical data and their application in comparative social research. The course is aimed primarily at Master’s students, PhD equivalent students and young specialists in sociology, politics, psychology and economics who want to develop their quantitative research skills. Over the two weeks of the school, Professor Jacques Hagenaars of the University of Tilburg is explaining the basic principles of working with categorical data. His assistant professor for the purpose is Zhuzha Bakk a PhD student at Tilburg.
There are three other courses on the summer school. The first is in Modernisation and cultural change, taught by LCSR’s academic supervisor and manager Ronald Inglehart (University of Michigan, USA) and covers the basis of ideas he has developed on a general theory of modernisation. The second additional course, Political support and Democratic Values in cross-national perspectiveis taught by the famous German political scientist Hans Dieter Klingemann (Centre for research in social sciences WZB, Berlin) and looks at the basic achievements in political sociology in the last two decades. The third course is Changes in attitudes and religiosity: how to measure them which is taught by Kirill Zhirkov (Research Fellow at LCRS) on basic approaches to operationalisation measuring individual religiosity in cross-national research.
Reports on academic research projects funded by a mega-grant from the Russian government are also a feature of the summer school. The report session of the school is divided into ten sections which focus on various areas of social research including migration, inter-ethnic relations, subjective well-being, gender conditions, religiosity, civil engagement and many others.
Kirill Zhirkov
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