Welcome Plenary Session (The Auditorium, Monument Building, Nador utca 9)
After a few short 'welcome' addresses, the welcome plenary session introduces each SSMT main course Instructor for a very short presentation about his/her course.  If this stirs your interest or raises questions, you may informally discuss these with the instructors during the welcome reception. Following this, the Academic Convenors present the course programme for the forthcoming ECPR Winter School in Methods and Techniques in Bamberg.

Welcome from CEU Official (Liviu Matei, Provost of CEU)

Welcome from CEU Local Academic Organiser (Carsten Schneider, Head of the Political Science Department at CEU)

Course Taster Sessions

The 'Course Taster' sessions cover two course from the broad Summer School programme. The Instructor of each course presents a short 25 minute lecture on their course topic.  This enables attendees to get a clearer pitcure of the core assumptions, goals and 'toolbox' within each course.

Session One (The Auditorium) - Qualitative Data Analysis: Concepts and Approaches (Marie-Hélène Paré) - THIS SESSION ONLY HAS MOVED TO THURSDAY

Session Two (Popper Room) - Bayesian Statistics for the Social Sciences (Juraj Medzihorsky)

Brown Bag Lunch Sessions

Brown Bag Sessions are lunchtime sessions (with a "brown bag" lunch arranged if you wish), consisting of a presentation by experts, followed by an open debate.  We have selected two topics for parallel Brown Bag Sessions; one methodological, the other dealing with professional development. Booking forms are available at the Summer School office.  If you would like to register your attendance to the event in advance, please email methodsschool@ecpr.eu.

Session One - Succeeding with Research Grants (Popper Room, First Floor, Monument Building, Nador utca 9)
Speakers: Ingo Rohlfing, Bruno Cautres and Erin Jenne
Writing grants is a key part of modern research, but is notoriously difficult and challenging. This session asks several Instructors who have extensive experience (and success!) with writing research grants to share their experiences. What works and what should be avoided?

Session Two - Getting Published (The Auditorium, First Floor, Monument Building, Nador utca 9)
Speakers: Carsten Schneider and Alenka Jelen-Sanchez
Publish or perish? But how? What are the golden rules for publishing books and articles? What are the selling points required for getting a piece of research past peer reviews? Do the standards differ significantly across different research cultures? This sesison will provide practical guidance from experienced researchers, helping you to avoid some of the most common pitfalls in publishing.

Course Taster Sessions

The 'Course Taster' sessions cover two courses from the broad Summer School programme.  The Instructor of each course presents a short 25 minute lecture on their course topic.  This enables attendees to get a clearer pitcure of the core assumptions, goals and 'toolbox' within each course.

Session One (Popper Room) - Process-tracing (Rasmus Brun Pedersen)

Session Two (Nador 11, Room 004) - Program Evaluation and Impact Assessment (Dániel Horn)

Session Three (MB201) - Qualitative Data Analysis: Concepts and Approaches (Marie-Hélène Paré) - MOVED FROM TUESDAY

Course Taster Sessions 
The 'Course Taster' sessions cover two courses from the broad Summer School programme.  The Instructor of each course presents a short 25 minute lecture on their course topic.  This enables attendees to get a clearer pitcure of the core assumptions, goals and 'toolbox' within each course.

Session One (The Auditorium) - Analysing Discourse: Analysing Politics (Michal Krzyzanowski)

Session Two (Popper Room) - Qualitative Content Analysis (Kostas Gemenis)

Course Taster Sessions

The 'Course Taster' sessions cover two course from the broad Summer School programme. The Instructor of each course presents a short 25 minute lecture on their course topic.  This enables attendees to get a clearer pitcure of the core assumptions, goals and 'toolbox' within each course.

Session One (The Auditorium) - Theoretically Informed Network Analysis (Balazs Vedres)

Session Two (Popper Room) - Structural Equation Modelling (Jochen Mayerl)

Brown Bag Lunch Sessions

Brown Bag Sessions are lunchtime sessions (with a "brown bag" lunch arranged if you wish), consisting of a presentation by experts, followed by an open debate.  We have selected two topics for parallel Brown Bag Sessions; one methodological, the other dealing with professional development. Booking forms are available at the Summer School office. If you would like to register your attendance to the event in advance, please email methodsschool@ecpr.eu.

Session One - Research Transparency in Qualitative and Interpretive Research (The Auditorium, Monument Building, Nador utca 9)
Speakers: Derek Beach, Patrick Jackson and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea
The Data Access / Research Transparency initiative (DA-RT) has sparked heated debate amongst qualitative and interpretive scholars in the US and Europe, and an increasing number of journals are requiring scholars to adhere to the proposed DA-RT standards to be published. The idea is that scholars mush provide a clear account of the sources and content of the information used to make claims, as well as providing a clear account of how inferences and conclusions were reached. While some scholars view the standards as a way to increase the credibility of qualitative and interpretive research, others see the proposed standards as making valuable types of work more difficult to conduct and publish, or even as part of a larger conspiracy against qualitative methods. This session will debate the need and appropriateness of the proposed DA-RT standards in qualitative and interpretive research.

Session Two - Correlation Is Not Causation, But It Can Be? (Popper Room, First Floor, Monument Building, Nador utca 9)
Speakers: Levi Littvay, Elias Dinas and Juraj Medzihorsky
Scientists approach the question of causality from multiple angles, but in quantitative methods the gold standard has been randomised experiments.  But in the social sciences randomised experiments can often be overly artificial or completely infeasible, and the alternative, observational studies, only allow us to observe correlation which, we know, is not causation.  Quantitative researchers are increasingly seeking out situations where observational studies, in the absence of the experimenter’s randomisation, produce scenarios where the data can be analysed as if it was a true randomised experiment leading to causal inference.  These approaches require creativity, the recognition of new and novel ways of asking research questions or looking at data.  Some of these, so-called quasi-experimental designs include matching, natural experiments regression discontinuity and instrumental variable models and, under certain conditions, allow for true causal inference.  Needless to say, the devil is in the details and mistakes are very easy to make.  Some would even argue that these methods are only used to fool oneself and they are completely inappropriate.  This session will lead us down the rabbit-hole of reformulating our thinking from correlation to causation, help us find these situations where causal inference is possible and, most importantly, help us see where mistakes are present in such inferences.