These are the slides I used for lecture in spring 2019. When I lecture, I go through as much material as possible at each lecture, subject to the constraint that everyone follows what I'm doing. The speed at which I go is therefore dependent on the composition of each year's class and the questions that arise. As such, the slides below are not broken up into distinct weeks (I seem to go through roughly 15-20 pages in a weekly session lasting almost 2 hours, but issues and topics not represented here are covered most weeks).  

Separate PDF versions of the slides...

For students who've taken a course in linear regression (such as Harvard's Gov2000), this course gives you the tools to learn new statistical methods or build them yourself.  We focus on methods practically useful in real social science research.  We aim to give you two types of skills

First, we show how to develop new approaches to research methods, data analysis, and statistical theory.   More advanced statistical theory is not required when data and variables follow standard assumptions. Since this is not usually the case in most of the...

Each week, you will have reading and problem sets.  

Reading assignments will be acquired and done in Perusall.com. You will also collaboratively annotate the readings, asking questions you may have, answering other students' questions, and generally engaging with the material and each other. To get started in Perusall, see Getting Started. We will explain more in Section as well.

We strongly encourage you to work together in...

All reading assignments must be acquired and read at the web site Perusall (which can also be accessed through Canvas, Harvard's learning management system). Perusall will enable you to obtain answers to questions instantly and to work collaboratively with other members of class....

The main assignment is to write a research paper that replicates an existing piece of scholarship.  The goal of the paper is to apply some advanced method to, or develop one for, a substantive problem in your field of study.  You should aim to produce a publishable article, and, in fact, most students do publish their final paper in a scholarly journal.  (I know it sounds absurdly hard, but that's only because you haven't learned some of the material we go over in class!)  More information about the paper can be found at...

This course is being offered as part of the Harvard Extension School's Distance Education Program. The recorded class meetings that you will view are from the Harvard FAS course, Government 2001, and this meets once per week throughout the term.  Even though your participation will take place online, you are responsible for homework, readings, quizzes, and all other work.  There will also be weekly on-campus section meetings and office hours for students who are able to attend, or watch the videotape of the section. Please see the...

Most in-class experience will be lecture-based, but some parts are designed as a collective experience.  This means that other students will be counting on you (and you on them), and so please come to class prepared.  If you don't understand something, that's perfectly fine; we'll figure it out together and make sure no one is left behind.  But if you don't put in the effort, it will hurt what everyone gets out of the class. If you have a question about one of the readings, post a question in Perusall. If you think you may know an answer to a query another...