Five Classes to Make You Smarter
Summer provides an ideal opportunity to learn from our research colleagues in the academic worlds. Many of them offer short, intensive “summer camp” training that is relevant and practical for market researchers. You get training that is far more rigorous and comprehensive than courses offered by “training institutes” and other commercial providers.
Here are our top picks for brief summer courses that will keep you and your colleagues at the cutting edge of research methods:
Exploratory Data Mining, offered at the University of California in Davis by the American Psychological Association — a five-day course that will cover the conceptual bases and strategies of exploratory data mining, and will review leading current techniques and software.
Social Network Analysis, offered by the University of Buffalo’s Department of Sociology — a three-day class that will teach theoretical and methodological skills to conduct studies using social network analysis. The course will focus on different network theories, their corresponding measures, and how to get the data to conduct a study.
Data Analysis with R, offered by the University of Kansas’ Center for Research Methods and Data Analysis — a five-day course on data management, statistical computing, modeling and graphics in R, which is destined to become the dominant statistical software package within the next decade.
Introduction to Bayesian Statistical Modeling, a three-day course offered at the University of Maryland — intended as both a theoretical and practical introduction to Bayesian statistics.
Mixed Methods: Approaches for Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Research Strategies, offered in Chapel Hill by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) — a three day workshop that will highlight the main elements of a research approach that collects, analyzes, and integrates both qualitative and quantitative data within a single study.
—Joe Hopper, Ph.D.