Survey & Polling Methodology
Survey research has played a pivotal role in politics for the better part of the last century, with a wide range of campaign and public policy professionals conducting surveys to gain insight into the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of the electorate and citizenry as a whole. Since the early 2000s, the use of survey experiments has become exponentially more prevalent in the political realm as a way to assess attitudes, anticipate reactions, or measure causal relationships. Recent trends point to the growing importance of the internet and social media to conduct surveys and the linkage of survey data with the wealth of publicly available personal information as well as with information on individuals’ social and economic behavior. In this course, students will learn about the strengths and weaknesses of survey research as well as limitations associated with survey design and various analytical techniques, and they will acquire concrete knowledge of practical tools used in campaigns, advocacy, and election forecasting. Students will be introduced to a set of principles for conducting survey research and analyzing survey data that are the basis for standard practice in the field. Students will be familiarized with terminology and concepts associated with survey questionnaire design, sampling, data collection and aggregation, and survey data analysis to gain insights and to test hypotheses about the nature of human and social behavior and interaction. The course will present a framework that will enable students to evaluate the influence of different sources of error on the quality of data.
- T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Kelly T Rader
Info - 2 points
Program Evaluation
Political campaign managers, policymakers, lobbying firms, advocacy organizations, and other professionals operating in the political arena need to be able to distinguish effective programs from ineffectual ones. Electoral campaigns, policy-making initiatives, advocacy efforts, lobbying operations, social movement activities, and media investigations can all be assessed through a program evaluation lens, enabling improved data-based decision-making regarding whether an existing program should be continued, expanded, enhanced, or discontinued. Program evaluation techniques can also be used to assess the potential impact of new programs and to improve the effectiveness of program administration. This course focuses on methods for evaluating program designs, evidence collection, analysis, and interpretation, frameworks for decision-making, and reporting and communicating findings. Students will build upon the foundational knowledge that was established during the Strategic Thinking course and develop practical skills related to various types of program evaluation.
- W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Sara Yeganeh
Info - 2 points
Leadership
Successful leaders in politics, campaign management, and related professions must be able to lead change in their organizations, not only motivate and manage their teams toward a common goal. The aims that leaders seek to achieve are determined by their ability to create value, collaborate, influence, navigate uncertainty, and advance ideas, programs, and movements. In this course, students will learn about how the development of personal attributes and abilities lays the groundwork for building the core leadership competencies that are essential for high-impact management as well as changing the behavior and the culture of organizations with particular emphasis on how to successfully introduce the methods and results of analytics. Students will explore the motivations, obstacles, and interventions of change, and learn to build alliances, facilitate difficult meetings and develop a transformation plan. They will also review some of the most important academic research and business publications on change management and the implementation of analytics. The course is intended to enhance practical skills through dynamic interactions with the instructor, role-playing with classmates, and other real-world experiences.
- M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
-
Instructor:
David Wolfson
Info - 2 points
Electoral Data & Predictive Modeling
One of the best ways to predict the future is to study the past. A dizzying amount of data is available to study elections and politics, including survey and polling data on individual preferences, beliefs, demographics, and choices; data on aggregate conditions and outcomes; and, for more recent years, a wide range of social media data. From polling analysts and pundits to campaign managers and career journalists, making sense of this data can create a competitive advantage for professionals working in the field of politics. By analyzing the results of previous elections, insights can be gleaned to enhance understanding of the factors that contributed to electoral wins and be used to build statistical models or to create machine learning models that can predict future outcomes. Students will curate various types of data and work with starter code to build their data wrangling and computational skills. Students will learn how to explore data with these techniques, understand how they work, and derive insights and knowledge based on the analysis results.
- W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Michael Schwam-Baird
Info - 3 points
Big Data & Political Strategy
Some experts on U.S. political campaigns have argued that big data has fundamentally changed the way politicians win elections and pursue policymaking. With the combination of massive amounts of personal data and information about individual voters and society at large, readily available processing power, sophisticated machine learning techniques, and cheap and efficient communication methods, modern political professionals are able to identify likely supporters, understand their issues of interest and concern, make direct appeals with micro-targeted messages, and mobilize these constituencies to donate, volunteer, turnout, mobilize, and vote accordingly. Without a doubt, big data has the potential to inform strategic decision-making across multiple aspects of politics. In this course, students will learn about the range of big data sources that can be gathered and aggregated, including public data, traditional and social media data, consumer and transactional data, web data, and data from machines and sensors. Students will become familiar with the ways in which both structured and unstructured data can be used to gain insights about political actors’ sentiments, attitudes, and opinions and to develop strategies to predict and prompt behavior.
- R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Benjamin Messner
Info - 3 points
Independent Study
This one-semester course provides an opportunity for a student to extend or supplement their educational experience via a deep-dive into an established or novel area of research of their choice (the topic), under the guidance and supervision of a faculty member (the supervisor). An independent study course allows a student to work one-on-one with a faculty member to gain and contribute new insight into the discipline of Political Analytics.
The topic can be chosen freely by the student as long as it falls within the general realm of Political Analytics or its specific content areas in the Political Analytics curriculum, such as politics and advocacy, data analytics, campaign management, polling, and quantitative methods. The course will therefore serve the dual purpose of allowing a student to pursue their own intellectual curiosity and to make a contribution to the wider discipline of Political Analytics while also deepening their understanding of the content they acquired in other courses, by applying this material to the specific topic chosen for the Independent Study.
-
Instructor:
Gregory Wawro
CULPA: 32 h-index: 13 Info - 1-3 points