EH130-7-SL-CO:
Introduction to Quantitative Text Analysis
2022/23
Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis
Colchester Campus
Summer & Long Vacation
Postgraduate: Level 7
Current
Monday 24 April 2023
Wednesday 04 October 2023
15
03 February 2023
Requisites for this module
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With the massive and ever-increasing availability of digital text data, social scientists increasingly use automated text analysis (or "text as data") to examine various kinds of social and political phenomena. This module introduces participants to a variety of its methods and tools. We discuss their theoretical assumptions, substantive applications of these methods, and their implementation in the R statistical programming language. The meetings – which combine lectures and coding sessions in the RStudio Cloud platform – will be hands-on, dealing with practical issues in each step of a text as data project.
No information available.
Participants will understand fundamental issues in quantitative text analysis research design such as textual representations, measurement reliability and validation, and prediction accuracy. Participants will learn to convert texts into informative feature matrices and to analyse those matrices using statistical methods. Participants will learn to apply these methods to a text corpus in support of a substantive research question. Furthermore, participants will be able to critically evaluate (social science) research that uses automated text analysis methods.
Familiarity with basic research design and statistical analysis is expected, and familiarity with the R statistical programming language is strongly encouraged.
Background Reading
Benoit (2020). “Text as Data: An Overview”. Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations. Ed. by L. Curini and R. Franzese. Thousand Oaks: Sage: 461–497.
Welbers, K., Van Atteveldt, W., & Benoit, K. (2017). Text analysis in R. Communication Methods and Measures, 11(4), 245–265.
Module information will be made available at https://essexsummerschool.com/.
Please contact essexsummerschoolssda@essex.ac.uk and govpgquery@essex.ac.uk with any queries.
No information available.
This module does not appear to have a published bibliography for this year.
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
| Coursework / exam |
Description |
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Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
No
No
No
Available via Moodle
No lecture recording information available for this module.
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