This course builds upon Quantitative Methods I and it extends basic statistical techniques and their application to cross-national analysis of international relations. It introduces students to some widely used statistical techniques and data analyses, and provides a basis for learning, understanding and using more advanced statistical methods in their own research. The learning method is a theoretical discussion followed by a practical application of various models and tools to the estimation of outcomes of interest, such as the probability of war between nations, causes of democratization, political survival of leaders in office, etc.
Students should be able to understand and interpret the resuls of the quantitative studies published in the top IR. journals. They will be able to use the most common statistical methods in their own research. Crucially, they should be able to build upon and extend on techniques learnt in this class.
1 Revision of hypothesis testing and statistical inference, the science
and art of quantitative research in IR.
2 Doing statistics with STATA (cont.), data manipulation, visualization,
importing, constructing and merging datasets; using the most common datasets
in IR., e.g., COW, Banks, Archigos, etc.
3 Using OLS regression, assumptions and the methods of the ordinary least
squares, estimation
4 Using OLS regression (cont.), interactions, diagnostics, graphical and
substantive interpretation, predicting values
5 Using fixed and random effects models, time-series cross-section data,
graphical and substantive interpretation, predicting values
6 Logit and probit regression, limited dependent variable, diagnostics,
graphical and substantive interpretation, predicting values
7 Multinomial logit, dealing with dyadic data, rare events logit
8 Survival analysis, preparing data for survival analysis; graphical and
substantive interpretation, predicting and interpreting hazard rates
9-12 Applying quantitative methods to students’ own research, replication
of an article published in a major IR. or PoliSci journal
4 take-home assignments 40% (10% each)
Final article replication and analysis 60%
The final project will be quantitative analysis of a published quantitative work. Students will obtain the same data as used for the original piece, replicate it, and extend it using a new model or new variables if possible.
