Join CSDE Workshops: “Introduction to Survey Data Sources” and “Agent Based Modeling in R”

Posted: 2/22/2021 (CSDE Workshop)

CSDE is offering two workshops on “Introduction to Survey Data Sources” (02/24) and “Agent Based Modeling in R” (03/05). Students, faculty, and staff are all welcome to register for our workshops and we welcome registrants from outside the University of Washington as well. If you miss a workshop, recordings will be available on our website for 3 months after the workshop. To register, click here.

CSDE Training Director  and Research Scientist Dr. Christine Leibbrand will lead the workshop on February 24th on accessing some major American demographic survey data sources.  Participants will learn about a variety of longitudinal survey data sources that are (for the most part) publicly-available and easily accessible. These data sources will include: The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and its Child Supplement (CNLSY); The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97); Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) and The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Topics covered include their sampling strategies, the characteristics of their survey populations, the years they surveyed populations, an overview of the data included in these surveys, and an introduction into how to access and download the publicly available data and access restricted data. By the end of this workshop, participants will have a better understanding of longitudinal survey data sources that you might consider using for your future research projects. Dr. Leibbrand is uniquely qualified to offer this workshop, as she has analyzed and published analyses using all of these data sources.

CSDE Research Scientist Dr. Deven Hamilton will lead the workshop on March 5th on agent-based modeling in R. The workshop will  provide a basic introduction to Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) and will be divided into three sections. The first section will review and discuss the basic elements of ABMs and their application in a variety of fields including demography, sociology, anthropology, political science and public health. The second section of the course will work through examples of an ABM and reproduce the models in R. Finally, the workshop will discuss an example of a complex ABM using the statnet and EpiModel R packages. By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to describe the unique features of ABM that make them distinct from other modeling approaches, write R functions to produce a simple ABM, and be familiar with additional R packages that provide functionality for ABM.