Testing big ideas with simple methods

This is a blog for students in the social sciences and related disciplines. The main goal is to show students how they can test their ideas – e.g., about the role of class, social norms, political institutions, or gender – with relatively simple methods and open-source software (R).

Comparing countries with macro-level data

Macro

Comparing countries

Economics

Political science

Sociology

Many important questions that political scientists, sociologists, or economists are asking are about patterns at the macro- or country-level: Why do some countries have…

How vulnerable are workers to globalization (and what effects does this have)?

Survey data

Globalization

Merging data

ESS

Political science

Sociology

Economics

‘Globalization destroys jobs’ or similar statements are often made by politicians or business and labor leaders, especially when new trade agreements are in the process of…

Comparing people’s behavior and attitudes across countries

Survey data

Comparing countries

Gender

ESS

Political science

Sociology

How much are people’s opinions, behaviors, or perceptions affected by the environments (or “macro-level contexts”) they live in? Many sociologists argue that societal norms…

Measuring class with survey data

Survey data

Class

ISSP

Political science

Sociology

Class is a key concept in the social and political sciences, and it explains many important phenomena, from party preferences and voting over social attitudes to health…