17.871 Home Page

Subject Information

Links down this column of the page refer to requirements and assignments for 17.871 in the Spring of 2008. Archives of class material are available from Fall 1999 and Spring 2001, when the class was numbered 17.801, and Spring 2002, Spring 2003, Spring 2006 and Spring 2007. In Spring 2004 and Spring 2005, the class was on Stellar, which means (alas), it is not generally available to browsers. This class also has an OCW page.


Syllabus and class schedule

Syllabus (updated 2/5/2008)

Group Projects

Edward Tufte. Data Analysis for Politics and Policy. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974 (link to online archive of book)


Handouts

Stata handout
Introduction to Stata
Resources for learning Stata
Stata starting kit

How to Use the STATA infile and infix commands
How to Use the STATA merge and reshape commands


Assignments

Problem Set 1
Problem Set 2
Problem Set 3
Problem Set 4

Data Source for Problem Set 1 | Codebook (.doc)
Problem Set 2: First Data Source | Second Data Source
Data Source for Problem Set 3

Final Project Assignments | Checklist


Lectures
The following slides were used in lecture.

Introduction and Research Design
Finding Data
Descriptive Statistics
Measurement
Bivariate Regression
Multiple Regression
Inference
Special Topics

Review

Data Links

Links down this column of the page refer to various data sites that have proved useful over the years. I invite nominations for new sites and information about inactive sites.


Harvard-MIT Data Center
Social Science Data Resources @ the MIT Libraries
Political Science Data Resources from the Stanford University Library
UC Data Archive @ Berkeley
Paul Hensel's International Relations Data Site
Washington Post gateway to government Internet resources.


American Religion Data Archive
Bureau of Economic Analysis
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Bureau of Transportation Statistics
Division of Science Resources Studies (NSF)
Energy Information Administration
Environmental Protection Agency
Federal Budget
FEDSTATS (Index to federal agency statistics on line)
National Agricultural Statistics Service
National Center for Education Statistics
National Center for Health Statistics
Office of Management and Budget
Statistics of Income Division (Internal Revenue Service)
U.S. Census Bureau
U.S. Federal Election Commission
World Bank: Social Indicators of Development, 1995
World Bank: Trends in Developing Economies, 1995


Methodology section, APSA
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world's largest archive of computer-readable social science data.
National Election Study (NES), for information about public opinion studies
Working Paper Sites of Political Science