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

Context: constraints and motivations for teaching with quantitative data

Examples from Manchester

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

Methods Modules

Substantive 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

MethodsModules

British Social AttitudesBritish Election StudyHealth Survey for EnglandCrime Survey for EnglandLabour Force surveySmoking Drinking and Drug

use among young PeopleUnderstanding Societyetc. etc. etc.

Substantive modules?

Using this data has helped methods modules connect to the substantive curriculum

But we currently make relatively little use of it outside the methods classes

Embedding QM in Substantive TeachingESRC Curriculum Innovation (CI) > Q-Step

Teaching Partnerships (Sociology and Politics)• 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• Research skills for Politics• Urban Sociology• The Politics Project• British Society in a Globalising World • Work Economy and Society• ….

1. Showing the contribution of QM within the discipline/subject area

2. Giving students the skills and confidence to engage with quantitative evidence.

3. Making connections with the methods modules

QUANTS DATA &

METHOD

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 DatasetViews 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 2Attitudes 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 cross-tabulations 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 3Power 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 donePercent answering 'Ever done'' Age group 1983 n 2000 n 2011 n<25 4.5 222 1.7 241 7.4 24125-44 2.2 640 11.7 879 7.1 87945-64 1.6 514 12.6 728 9.6 72865+ 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 theoryDeveloping 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

• 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

• 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/government-s

pending-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