Monday, July 28, 2025 - 9:30am - 2:00pm, with 30 minute break
Tuesday, July 29, 2025 - 9:30am - 2:00pm, with 30 minute break
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 two-day (8 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 an introduction to word embeddings. 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 and Legal Studies and a core faculty member in the Data Analytics & Computational Social Science Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 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 American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Law and Society Review, and Journal of the Law and Courts, among other outlets
REGISTRATION INFORMATION | 8-HOUR WORKSHOP
Important: If you are registering for more than one workshop, please verify that all workshops are in your cart with the correct institutional and career status selected, for accurate pricing.
Five College Students and Faculty
- Five College Undergraduate and Graduate Students and Postdocs: $100/person
- Five College Faculty & Staff: $180/person
Non-Five College Students and Faculty
- Non-Five College Undergraduate and Graduate Students and Postdocs: $200/person
- Non-Five College Faculty, Staff & Other Professionals: $280/person
Registration note: The Five Colleges include: UMass Amherst, Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, and Smith College. Faculty, students and staff from University of Massachusetts Boston, Dartmouth and Lowell campuses and UMass Chan Medical School pay the five college rates. Registration closes for each workshop 2 full business days prior to the start date. If paying with departmental funds, contact Sue Falcetti (sfalcetti@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.