Enriching Social Science Teaching with Empirical Data
(ESSTED)
Teaching Politics with Quantitative Data
Mark Brown, Jen Buckley
(and the ESSTED team)
www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/essted
Outline
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Context: constraints and motivations for teaching with
quantitative data
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Examples from Manchester
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Quantitative Resources for teaching
Introductions
2 perspectives?
– Subject specialists.. Looking for ways to make more and
better use of relevant quantitative data in their teaching.
– Methods teachers looking for a more integrated way of
embedding QM training in the curriculum - Students more
likely to engage with quantitative data if they encounter it
as a normal and integrated part of learning about
substantive issues
Quants Disconnected
Substantive
Modules
Methods
Modules
Making bridges
(bringing relevance to the methods module)
Lots of progress with this:
•use of real world datasets
•quants taught in substantive context
•Students see relevance > more engaged
Making bridges
(enriching substantive teaching with quants data
and method)
Less of this going on :
• Substantive modules often lack much reference to quants
data
• very few make quant skills explicit in assessment activities
The Uk Data Service: an embarrassment of
riches for teaching QM
Methods
Modules
Using this data has
helped methods
modules connect to
the substantive
curriculum
British Social Attitudes
British Election Study
Health Survey for England
Crime Survey for England
Labour Force survey
Smoking Drinking and Drug
use among young People
Understanding Society
etc. etc. etc.
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Substantive
modules
But we currently
make relatively little
use of it outside the
methods classes
Embedding QM in Substantive Teaching
ESRC Curriculum Innovation (CI) > Q-Step
Teaching Partnerships (Sociology and Politics)
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Intro to Comparative Politics
Power and Protest
The Sociology of Personal Life
Racism and Ethnicity in the UK
Elections and Voters
The Sociology of Spiritual Life
The Dissertation
Politics of Policy Making
1.
Research skills for Politics
Urban Sociology
2.
The Politics Project
British Society in a Globalising World
Work Economy and Society
3.
….
QUANTS
DATA &
METHOD
Showing the contribution of QM
within the discipline/subject area
Giving students the skills and
confidence to engage with
quantitative evidence.
Making connections with the
methods modules
Models for embedding
• Light touch e.g incorporating some up-to-date
statistics in lecture slides
• More challenging e.g. tutorial exercises involving
hands on work with data
Slides for Power and Protest
A tutorial exercise
(sourcing tables on attitudes to welfare and poverty)
Manchester observations
• No resistance to the idea of bringing in more
quants to substantive modules
• Positive response to the quant skills agenda
and recognition that it would enhance their
courses
• Lack of data in teaching more typically
reflected lack of time for course development
(sourcing and preparation of data can be very
time consuming), and a degree of inertia.
Your experience?
Constraints to use of quantitative data in teaching
• Quantitative data not relevant
• Quantitative data not available
• Lack of time to find relevant data and incorporate
into teaching
• Lack of confidence/data skills to use in teaching
(including TAs)
• The basic level of student quantitative skills
• Other
The problem
• Suggest the problem is not ‘is there good data’
• but the time investment required to find it and prepare it for
teaching
• …and/or lack of confidence/skills to go beyond use in slides
• Approach at Manchester has been to try and address that by
supporting subject specialists with ‘teaching partnerships’
• Two challenges..
– Finding the relevant data resources
– Developing models for using data in teaching
Sourcing Data > teach-ready data > use in teaching
Embedding in Practice
• Making Students Part of the Dataset
Example 1
Attitudes to Immigration
What we did
• 4 BSA Questions set
up as a Blackboard
Survey
• Class results used as a
basis for comparison
with national sample
• Used as lecture
content and a tutorial
exercise
Making Students part of the Dataset
Views of cultural impact of immigration over last 10 years
2011 British Social Attitudes
Observations
• Easily integrated into the existing course format
• Tutorial exercise led by the substantive question (why the
differences?)
• but introducing a host of important quantitative concepts and
skills (in a natural and non-threatening way)
– Measurement
– Samples and Populations
– Making comparisons
• Making students active participants (part of the dataset)
generates interest and demystifies the process of data
derivation
Example 2
Attitudes to inequality and the welfare state
• Same idea (7 BSA questions in BB)
• but this time replacing tutorial with
a one hour computer workshop
using http://www.britsocat.com/
• Students compared their own class
results against the national sample
• ...and undertook some simple crosstabulations of the national sample
• ... Saved and used those outputs as
part of their required evidence base
for a coursework project
Observations
• Again the focus of the exercise is kept on the substantive
questions, but students are actively engaging with / practicing
quantitative skills
• Using http://www.britsocat.com/ - opens up possibility of
working hands on with a large scale dataset WITHOUT
requirement of prior SPSS training (within 1 hour students
with no prior experience were confidently pulling off bespoke
tables)
• Just needed computer cluster for 1 week of course (securing
large teaching clusters can be a major barrier to greater use of
hands on data work outside the methods modules)
Embedding in Practice
• An evidence base for exploring and
critiquing theory
Quantitative data as an evidence base
for engaging with theory
• Social science students need to understand and
critique a range of theories
• But many do this without much explicit
engagement with the evidence base (particularly
quantitative), especially in their assessed work
• Reflects in part a lack of exposure to this data in
the delivery of courses
Example 3
Power and Protest
• Focussed on a week looking at trends in political participation
• Used BSA data as an evidence base for a class debate on
whether the young are disengaging from politics
What we did..
• Last year – students provided with a set of handouts of tables
sourced from BSA and Hansard’s Audit of Political
Engagement- used as evidence to debate different theories
introduced in the lecture
• This year – students provided with handouts from the Audit
of Political Engagement only ... and instructions on how to
source their own tables from http://www.britsocat.com/ which they printed off and brought to the debate
Tables from British Social Attitudes (Various Years)
(Population: Adults aged 18 years and over resident in Great Britain)
1. Question: About a government action which you thought was unjust
and harmful.
Have you ever … Gone on a protest or demonstration?
(0) Never Done
(1) Ever done
Percent answering 'Ever done''
Age group
1983 n
2000 n
2011 n
<25
4.5
222
1.7
241
7.4
241
25-44
2.2
640
11.7 879
7.1
879
45-64
1.6
514
12.6 728
9.6
728
65+
0.6
338
3.6
439
6.1
439
Observations
• An exercise with multiple learning objectives
– Using evidence to evaluate theory
– Sourcing and presenting evidence
– Interpreting tables
– Critical evaluation of evidence
• And students seemed positive about the experience evidence that the exercise enhanced their learning with less
sign of the ‘numbers phobia’ encountered in the methods
modules....
For the group of students who especially
liked the workshop, I asked them to write
down for me why they liked it....
Engaging with theory
Developing own perspective:
‘What I found helpful about being given tables of data to look at and analyse
in the lecture was that by being given the numerical data we were able to
critically engage with the results and therefore interpret them and think of
the causality ourselves, rather than being told what the results are and
what this means by a sociologist who may have put their own perspective
on them’
Critical engagement:
‘The quants activity we did in the workshop really helped when we were
discussing the theories with each other. I know some people find looking at
tables really daunting but I think it really helps to back up some sociological
arguments with stats. For me personally I always feel like I understand the
theory better when I can use quants to argue around it. I'm using that topic
for the exam and I find it really aids my revision because I can critically
engage with the theories really easily using the stats’
Engaging with theory
Relevance of theory:
‘I found it extremely useful to learn about the theory and then have some real
life contextual evidence to engage with - it makes the theories feel more
worth while learning about. Sometimes I feel that it is easy to forget that
the theories we learn about in lectures are actually real life issues that
really do effect the way that people live their lives, their opinions and
actions. Personally, I can get a little bogged down with theoretical abstract
debates and loose sense of the issues as they are in reality. Adding some
quantitative analysis to my learning enables me to see the wider context of
theories and how they fit into real life statistical changes over time or to
the present day’.
A (rare) chance to develop skills and
confidence
‘I felt it was very useful to have practice looking at tables in lectures
and then having a chance to discuss them as a group, as throughout
sociology, unless you chose to take quantitative modules, you come
into little contact with the actual data and so when it does appear it
can seem quite intimidating. This means that if it appears in
readings, I think most people skim over it as they are not sure what
it is showing or where to begin with analysing it, so making it more
incorporated into lectures may give people a chance to become
familiar with it and would mean that they are more confident with
approaching data when it comes to the dissertation for example’
Transferable skills/employability
‘I also feel that having the confidence to look at numerical data will be
useful once we have left university and so having it incorporated
within our discipline is a good way of making us familiar with it’
‘Quantitative analysis is also an important transferable skill that I have
now been able to add to my CV and utilise whilst doing graduate
scheme online maths tests that often require you to analyse data
and numerical tables’
I really enjoy using quants in lectures but I know others don't, I just
feel like it might be helpful for various jobs knowing how to use and
analyse statistics’
Politics of Policy Making
Quantitative Embedding at Manchester
How sustainable?
• In all cases the quants level of the embedding was basic.. Once
developed, lecturers could repeat and deliver the innovations
without the need for external support
• However, initial development depended on dedicated resources
(including RA time to source and prepare data). The embedding
initiative is being driven on by appointment of Q-Step funded
lecturers
• But much harder where this support is lacking… especially if trying
to generate teaching resources from source data – Time for course
development/innovation inadequately covered in WAMs
• Growing interest in Open Education Resources (OERs)
Data for Teaching
• UK Data Service http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/ –
gateway to vast amounts of ‘raw’ data – but can
require major investment to source and prepare
for teaching (a goldmine for QM teachers but
less obvious use in substantive classes)
• But technical innovations are bringing increasing
amounts of good social data to the non-specialist
in a form that can be readily used in teaching.
• Includes many good sources for the Politics
classroom..
Some examples..
Survey data – citizen attitudes and participation
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World Values Survey
http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp
Centre for Comparative European Survey Data (CCESD)
http://www.ccesd.ac.uk/Home
British Election Study
http://www.besis.org/
http://www.britishelectionstudy.com/
British Social Attitudes
Includes online data access through simple interface
http://www.britsocat.com/
• http://www.bsa-30.natcen.ac.uk/ - online micro site detailing findings
from 30th BSA report with nice infographics showing change between 1983
and 2013 covering topics such as.. Measures of political engagement,
participation, trust and efficacy; Attitudes towards political issues such as
the welfare state, immigration and gender roles
Some examples..
Survey data – citizen attitudes and participation
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European Social Survey
http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/
http://essedunet.nsd.uib.no/
Online training through ESS EDUnet with modules on Social
and Political Trust and Immigration
• Understanding Society
• https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/
• The Understanding Society website provides detailed
information about the survey and friendly summaries of key
findings and podcasts including Gender inequality, youth
volunteering, ‘green’ attitudes and behaviour .
Parties and Governments
• Comparative Manifestos Project
• https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu/
• Data on political preferences of parties across time and space
• Policy Agendas
• The Policy Agendas Project collects and organizes data from
various archived sources to trace changes in policy agendas
and public policy outcomes.
• For the US http://www.policyagendas.org/
• For the UK http://www.policyagendas.org.uk/
• Comparative http://www.comparativeagendas.info/
Other
• The Guardian Datablog
• The Guardian Datablog and Datastore provide access to data through
engaging visualisations and easy downloads. Examples of useful resources
include
• Turnout and party choice interactive graphs
• http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2013/dec/27/vo
ter-apathy-1964-2010-change-voting-behaviour
• Government spending infographic
• http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/dec/04/governmentspending-department-2011-12
• Gapminder
• http://www.gapminder.org/
• Interactive website developed by Hans Roslin for visualsing macro data
covering varied topics including Spending and Receipt of Aid budgets,
Education levels and Health. The site is especially directed towards
exploring ideas about the ‘developed’ and ‘developing world’
Sharing teaching materials
• Jorum
• http://www.jorum.ac.uk/
• Searchable Repository for Open Educational
Resources (OERs)
• Likely to expand under Q-Step