Advanced Survey Design

This five-day course in survey design takes students beyond the introductory courses offered in BA and MA programmes, and discusses current issues in one of the most important data collection methods: surveys. Specifically, it focuses on doing surveys in the Internet-era. It will show how to collect data in online surveys, using smartphones, and mixing surveys with Big data, such as digital behavioral data, smartphone sensors or administrative data. It combines short one-hour lectures with exercises on most of the topics discussed. Course participants must be proficient in working with statistical software. Course materials are prepared for working with R.

We present new ways to analyse modern surveys, including non-probability survey designs, smartphone data collection, digital trace data and data collected via apps. Course participants must be proficient working with the statistical software package R at the level of at least knowing Tidy and multivariate regression in R.

The course is interesting for social scientists or statisticians at the PhD level or beyond, working on academic research projectsThe course slightly overlaps with the course: S15 - Survey Research: Design, Implementation and Data Processing . The current course is however more advanced and more focused on survey research within the academic (university) setting, as well as focused on current issues related to the use of mobile phones and Big Data in social science research.

We expect students to have quite extensive knowledge of survey research (for example by using survey data extensively or conducting survey research in their daily work) and have knowledge of statistics at the MSc level for social scientists (the general linear model). Note that you have to upload a brief motivation letter (up to 300 words) with your application, in which you write a short list of your experience with surveys and statistical analyses. Please include in the motivation letter what software you are proficient in, and what courses related to survey design you have taken.

IOPS students do not have to do this.

Note: Participants need to bring a laptop computer to the course with R (https://www.r-project.org/) installed and the ability to download packages (Internet access is provided). Exercises are designed to be conducted in R. Users may use their own software of choice (e.g. Python, Stata, or SAS), but we do not provide solutions for these programmes.