Preface

A vast amount of political research is quantitative, and even if you decide never to conduct quantitative analysis yourself, you will find an introductory level of knowledge in quantitative methods useful to critically engage with your discipline as a whole. Skills in data analysis are also crucial for finding employment in graduate-level jobs.

This module will deliver an introduction to quantitative political analysis. It is based on Reiche’s typology of Quantitative Methods, and explores each of its tasks (conceptualisation and measurement, numerical data, data analysis, and interpretation) at an introductory level. The module uses the software R.

This is the online companion to the seminars on PO11Q. It hosts all of the material needed for the seminars and replaces the physical worksheets which we work through in some of the seminars. This is environmentally friendlier, and once we get to working with R, it also allows you to copy/paste code directly from the code chunks in this online companion.

I hope you find this useful!