Project Mosaic to sponsor workshops

Project Mosaic, established by the University to enhance social and behavioral science research, will hold a number of free workshops for faculty and graduate students. Registration is required.

The workshops have been selected by Project Mosaic officials to meet the methodological needs of social and behavioral scientists.

Upcoming workshops include:

“Thinking about Qualitative Software: NVivo and Its Potential” at 3 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 29, in Atkins Library, Room 273.

In this workshop, Donna Lanclos from the J. Murray Atkins Library will discuss the potential that qualitative software packages like NVivo have for researchers on campus. Such software can provide a central place for qualitative research data like interview transcripts, sound files, photos and document scans. The software allows not just for collection of data into one place but also analysis and reporting. After a brief overview of the functions of the software, there will be a discussion on the pros and cons of such programs, with an eye to helping researchers decide how they might use it in their own projects.

“Introduction to GIS” at 10 a.m., Friday, Jan. 31, in McEniry Building, Room 420.

Amos Gong from the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences will introduce students to geographic information systems (GIS). This introductory workshop will provide participants intuitive images about what GIS is, what GIS can do for their own research and how to start using GIS. Students will have a clear understanding about spatial data versus non-spatial data and how GIS represents spatial/non-spatial data with maps and tables. This workshop will guide students to the territory of GIS through hands-on experiences with a couple of leading software packages in this domain. Participants are encouraged to bring their own spatial data and research questions related to spatial problems to the workshop for discussion. The organization of this workshop includes lecture, live demos and lab exercises.

“Stata I” at 3 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 5, in Friday Building, Room 339.

Mauricio Quinones from the public policy program will discuss Stata, one of the most widely used statistical software for data analysis purposes. Attendees will learn the basic tools about Stata, a powerful software that is easy to use and makes researchers, students and people interested in statistical analysis. The software has the possibility of working with command or windows. However, the use of windows allows to keep and save the commands, which is a very useful feature. The workshop contains the basic explanations about Stata datasets and commands, data management and graphics. No previous knowledge about Stata is required. At the end of the workshop, it is expected that the attendees can manipulate data in the Stata environment, carry out descriptive statistics and graph them.

“Map Design with GIS” at 10 a.m., Friday, Feb. 7, in McEniry Building, Room 420.

Mona Kashiha from the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences will lead this workshop for thos who want to learn how to make an accurate and pretty map that can tell stories of their research. Attendees will learn it is not just as simple as clicking buttons of a GIS software. Participants will be trained systematically with the understanding of the concepts and procedures and hands-on techniques of map making. The content of this workshop covers map projections, scales, map elements and thematic map. Participants are encouraged to bring their own data for the map making exercise. The organization of this workshop include lecture, live demos and hands-on exercises.

“Stata II” at 3 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 12, in Friday Building, Room 339.

Mauricio Quinones from the public policy program will lead this workshop that continues from the first stage. At this level, attendees are expected to have attended the first level workshop or to have worked with Stata before. This workshop will focus on data description, simple inference and estimation – linear regression -, and its output interpretation. It will use at least two real datasets to practice. At the end of the workshop, attendees are expected to produce basic quality analysis integrating all the tools learned.

“Navigating Census Data Sets” at 3 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 13, in Atkins Library, Room 273.

Reese Manceaux from the Digital Scholarship Lab will lead this short course, which is an introduction to U.S. Census data sets. It will cover the following topics:

• Introduction to the Decennial Census, the American Community Survey and the Population Estimates Program and the differences between these resources. Participants will learn about different Census geographies and how to download the data
• Introduction to using the American FactFinder. Participants will learn about ACS estimates, when to use one-, three- or five-year estimates and how to access online maps
• Short overview of other tools that use Census data: SimplyMap, DataFerrett, IPUMS, Geolytics CD data in the library
• How to get FactFinder downloads into ArcGIS

“Introduction to SAS – SAS Fundamentals” at 3 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 18, in Fretwell Building, Room 418.

Liqiu Deng, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, will lead this session on SAS (Statistical Analysis Software). This analytic software suite has the largest market share and is becoming increasingly popular in academics. SAS offers a one-stop solution from data management to advanced analytics, and its “procedure-based” language lets users focus less on programming details and more on analysis and modeling. This workshop will introduce basic SAS syntax of data step and procedures and fundamental data skills, including reading, writing, subsetting, merging, concatenating (stacking, union), etc. The workshop will include lecture and hands-on exercises.

“Introduction to SAS – Data Management” at 3 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 20, in Fretwell Building, Room 418.

Liqiu Deng, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, will facilitate this session on SAS (Statistical Analysis Software). This workshop will review the SAS version of SQL, advanced data skills and examples of how to derive additional information from original data by using common SAS functions. The workshop will include lecture and hands-on exercises.

“Introduction to SAS – Statistical analysis” at 3 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 25, in Fretwell Building, Room 418.

Liqiu Deng, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, will lead this session on SAS. This workshop will review common SAS/STAT (Statistics) and SAS/ETS (Econometrics and Time Series) procedures and their applications. The workshop will include lecture and hands-on exercises.

“Geocoding with ArcGIS” at 3:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 26, in Fretwell Building, Room 418.

Mona Kashiha, Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, will lead this workshop to help participants understand what geocoding is and how to perform geocoding using ArcGIS. The topics covered include the concept of geocoding, the inputs preparation for geocoding, the procedure to perform geocoding and the output format of geocoded data. This workshop will focus on geocoding operations within the environment of a leading GIS software package, ArcGIS. The participants of this workshop will obtain conceptual knowledge about geocoding and practical techniques to perform geocoding operations through hands-on exercises. The organization of this workshop includes lecture, live demos and lab exercises.