This workshop will be offered online.
Description: With the rapid explosion in availability of digitized text, social scientists are increasingly turning to computational tools for the analysis of text-as-data. In this three-day (9-hour) course, participants will first learn how to convert text to formats suitable for analysis. From there, the course will introduce and proceed through tutorials on a variety of approaches to the treatment of text-as-data. This will include relatively simple dictionary approaches for measurement, supervised learning approaches for document classification, topic models, and a brief introduction to vector representations and tools for measuring word similarity. Participants are expected to have a basic familiarity with the R programming language.
Instructor: Douglas Rice
Douglas Rice is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his PhD in Political Science from Penn State University in 2013, and was Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Mississippi from 2013 through 2015. He studies the role of courts in the policy process, seeking to understand when and how courts influence other institutions as well as the different factors influencing legal decision making and the policy output of courts. By developing and employing a variety of tools from computational social science in a domain that produces voluminous text data, his work clarifies the influence of courts on public policy and improves our understanding of strategic judicial decision making. His research has been published in the Journal of Politics, Law and Society Review, and Journal of the Law and Courts, among other outlets.
Questions? For more information about this or any of the ISSR Summer Methodology Workshops, please contact ISSR Director of Research Methods Programs Jessica Pearlman (jpearlman@issr.umass.edu).
THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL AND REGISTRATION IS CLOSED. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE PUT ON A WAITLIST, PLEASE CONTACT JESSICA PEARLMAN AT jpearlman@issr.umass.edu
Five College Students and Faculty
- Five College Undergraduate and Graduate Students…………………………..$115/person
- Five College Faculty………………………………………………………………....$225/person
Non-Five College Students and Faculty
- Non-Five College Undergraduate and Graduate Students…………………………..$225/person
- Non-Five College Faculty………………………………………………………………....$320/person
Registration note: The Five Colleges include: UMass Amherst, Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, and Smith College. Registration closes for each workshop 2 full business days prior to the start date. Please note: payment of registration does not guarantee a spot in these space-limited workshops. You will receive an email confirming your successful registration if accepted. If a workshop you have registered for is over-subscribed, you will be refunded and offered placement on a wait-list. If paying with departmental funds or personal checks, contact Karen Mason (mason@issr.umass.edu).
Cancellation note: In cases where enrollment is 5 or less, we reserve the right to cancel the workshop. In cases where the registrant cancels prior to the workshop, a full refund will be given with two weeks notice, and 50% refund will be given with one week notice. We will not be able to refund in cases where registrant does not notify us of cancellation at least one week prior to the beginning date of the workshop.
