Advanced Survey Design

This course in ‘advanced survey design’ takes students beyond the introductory courses and will discuss the state of the art in both the design and the analysis of survey data. We discuss new ways to analyse text data and sensor data generated by modern surveys. Course participants must be proficient working with statistical software (Stata, SPSS or R). Course materials have been developed in R, but most exercises on days 1-3 is in SPSS or STATA.

This 5-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 discuss how to collect data in online surveys, using smartphones, and mixing surveys with Big data. It combines short 1-hour lectures with exercises on most of the topics discussed. Course participants must be fully proficient in working with a package for statistical software. Course materials are prepared for working with R, while most of the exercises will also work with STATA and with SPSS.

The course is interesting for social scientists or statisticians at the PhD level or beyond, working on academic research projects. Two courses are offered in the Utrecht Summer school that slightly overlap with this course: S15 – Survey Research: Design, Implementation and Data Processing and S16 -Survey Research: Statistical Analysis and Estimation. 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 mobile surveys and Big Data.

We expect students to have quite extensive knowledge of survey research (for example by using survey data extensively) 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.

Former occurrences of this course

30 Aug – 3 Sept 2021