Spring 2012 Statistical Software Workshops

Ryan Womack, Data and Economics Librarian, will be holding a series of hands-on workshops on the statistical software R and SAS.  This Spring, all workshops will be held at the Library of Science and Medicine, in the Special Collections Room, on Thursdays from 1:40 pm – 3 pm, beginning February 2.
R is freely available, open source statistical software that has been widely adopted in the research community.  The  three-part workshop series, “An Introduction to R” covers

• Statistical Techniques: Descriptive Statistics, Regression, Significance, Finding Additional Packages (Feb 2)
• Graphics:  comparison of graphing techniques of basic R, lattice, and ggplot2 packages (Feb 9)
• Data Manipulation:  Data Import and Transformation (Feb 16)

In addition there will be a special topics session on Time Series in R, covering basic methods for handling time series data.  This session assumes basic knowledge of R equivalent to that covered in the introductory workshops.

• Time Series in R will be held on March 1.

SAS is a powerful and long-standing statistical software system.

The “Introduction to SAS” workshop is for students who are new to SAS. Through hands-on exercises, students will become familiar with the SAS interface and its basic functions of managing data, doing statistical analysis and generating graphs. For the workshop, students will use SAS for Linux through remote access to Rutgers X Application Server (apps.rutgers.edu).

Introduction to SAS will be held on February 23.

Once again, all workshops will be held on Thursdays from 1:40 pm – 3 pm in the LSM Special Collections Room.  You can bring your own laptop, or use the computers provided by the libraries for any of the sessions.

Workshop materials can be found on the “Software” tab of http://libguides.rutgers.edu/data

 

SAS Workshop

Introduction to SAS Statistical Software

This class is for students who are new to SAS. Through hands-on exercises, students will become familiar with the SAS interface and its basic functions of managing data, doing statistical analysis and generating graphs. For the workshop, students will use SAS for Linux through remote access to Rutgers X Application Server.

SAS is a powerful and long-standing statistical software system.

The class instructor is Ryan Womack, Data and Economics Librarian

This is an open workshop to be held at:

Alexander Library, Room 413
Friday, October 21
1-3 pm

More info on SAS, including workshop handouts, here.

Assessing Happiness and Competitiveness of World Major Metropolises, 2006

Assessing Happiness and Competitiveness of World Major Metropolises, 2006 empirically examines happiness and community/city conditions assessed by residents living in ten major cities of the world: Beijing, Berlin, London, Milan, New York City, Paris, Seoul, Stockholm, Tokyo, and Toronto. Respondents were asked questions about themselves and their city of residence. Questions focused on a range of topics including the economy, culture and education, welfare, safety, environment, living conditions, city administration, community life, health, and happiness. Demographic questions included city of residence, gender, age, education level, income level, occupation, marital status, and religion.

Crime in Boomburb Cities

Crime in Boomburb Cities: 1970-2004 focused on the effect of economic resources and racial/ethnic composition on the change in crime rates from 1970-2004 in United States cities in metropolitan areas that experienced a large growth in population after World War II. A total of 352 cities in the following United States metropolitan areas were selected for this study: Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Orange County, Orlando, Phoenix, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Silicon Valley (Santa Clara), and Tampa/St. Petersburg. Selection was based on the fact that these areas developed during a similar time period and followed comparable development trajectories. In particular, these 14 areas, known as the “boomburbs” for their dramatic, post-World War II population growth, all faced issues relating to the rapid growth of tract-style housing and the subsequent development of low density, urban sprawls. The study combined place-level data obtained from the United States Census with crime data from the Uniform Crime Reports for five categories of Type I crimes: aggravated assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, and motor vehicle thefts. The dataset contains a total of 247 variables pertaining to crime, economic resources, and race/ethnic composition.

HIV Transmission Network Metastudy Project: An Archive of Data From Eight Network Studies, 1988–2001

The HIV Transmission Network Metastudy project is a collection of datasets that could be used (1) to analyze the influence of partnership networks on the transmission of sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections, and (2) to examine the influence of study design on estimation of network properties and impacts. Eight studies contributed datasets to the collection in locations such as Colorado, Atlanta, Houston, Baltimore, and more.

R workshops

R Workshops

R is freely available, open source statistical software that has been widely adopted in the research community. Due to its open nature, thousands of add-ons (“packages” in R parlance) are available that handle many specialized functions and implement the latest statistical techniques. Ryan Womack, the Data Librarian, is presenting a three-part workshop series, “An Introduction to R” covering

Statistical Techniques: Descriptive Statistics, Regression, Significance, Finding Additional Packages
Graphics: comparison of graphing techniques of basic R, lattice, and ggplot2 packages
Data Manipulation: Data Import and Transformation

This is the schedule for Fall 2011:

Workshops will run for three consecutive weeks at the following times; choose the time that is most convenient for you.

Tuesdays 10-11:30 (Sept 6, Sept 13, Sept 20)
Wednesdays 1-2:30 (Sept 7, Sept 14, Sept 21)
Fridays 12-1:30 (Sept 9, Sept 16, Sept 23)

Put another way,

Statistical Techniques will be covered in the 1st week: Sept 6-9
Graphics will be covered in the 2nd week: Sept 13-16
Data Manipulation will be covered in the 3rd week: Sept 20-23

All workshops will be held in Alexander Library, Room 413 (4th floor of the new wing).

Each workshop is self-contained and will be hands-on with the software. A beginner would want to attend all three, but if there is one aspect
you want to brush up on, it is fine to attend that single session as well. All sessions are first come, first served (the lab has 23 PCs). If you have R on your laptop, feel free to bring it too. There is no need to register.

More R stuff at http://libguides.rutgers.edu/content.php?pid=115296&sid=1208422

Women’s Movements and Women’s Policy Offices in Western Postindustrial Democracies, 1970-2001

Women’s Movements and Women’s Policy Offices in Western Postindustrial Democracies, 1970-2001 was produced by the Research Network on Gender Politics and the State (RNGS) as a part of a cross-national longitudinal study of women’s policy offices and women’s movements in western postindustrial democracies. The RNGS dataset contains 130 policy debates/observations from 13 countries coded on 28 concepts and over 110 variables. It provides information on women’s movements, women’s policy offices, policy making processes, and policy debates over a 35-year time period.

IPUMS-International

The Minnesota Population Center is pleased to announce the latest expansion of the IPUMS-International data series. We recently added 26 new samples. The data release includes 7 new countries — Germany, Iran, Ireland, Jamaica, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Sudan — as well as additional samples for 5 countries already in the database: Cambodia, Egypt, France, Palestine and Vietnam. The data series now contains 397 million person records from 185 censuses in 62 countries.

Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Study

The Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) is a series of nationally representative surveys designed to monitor the effects of Russian reforms on the health and economic welfare of households and individuals in the Russian Federation. These effects are measured by a variety of means: detailed monitoring of individuals’ health status and dietary intake, precise measurement of household-level expenditures and service utilization, and collection of relevant community-level data, including region-specific prices and community infrastructure data. Data have been collected 18 times since 1992.

Note that this data is now freely available to scholars again (but still requires application and IRB approval).

Integrated Health Interview Series

The Integrated Health Interview Series (IHIS) has recently released 4000 new harmonized variables from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) from 1969 to 2009 (at www.ihis.us ). Funded by NIH and carried out at the Minnesota Population Center, the IHIS project is designed to make it easier for researchers to access and use multiple years of U.S. national survey data on health status, health behaviors, and health care by consistently coding and fully documenting variables across time. IHIS data are disseminated for free through a Web-based extraction system that allows researchers to create a customized file with only the years and variables they need. Recently added topic areas include survivorship of survey respondents, child and adult mental health, cancer family history, adult physical activity, and use of complementary and alternative medicine by children and adults.