Longitudinal Data Analysis

Michael Tzen May 21, 2015 2:00pm-5:00pm 2400 Public Affairs Building An increasing number of longitudinal datasets are being made available. The longitudinal nature of the dataset may be represented as a hierarchy of stages, say, measurements across time nested within an individual. We’ll discuss how hierarchical models account for the nested structures and how Generalized […]

Bayesian Statistical Modeling Using Stan

4240 Public Affairs Bldg

Daniel Lee June 23, 2015 10:00 AM-12:00 PM 4240 Public Affairs Building Stan is an open-source, Bayesian inference tool with interfaces in R, Python, Matlab, Julia, Stata, and the command line. Users write statistical models in a high-level statistical language. The default Bayesian inference algorithm is the no-U-turn sampler (NUTS), an auto-tuned version of Hamiltonian […]

All California Labor Economics Conference 2015

UCLA Carnesale Commons

The All-California Labor Economics Conference (ACLEC) brings together the top labor economists in California annually to present recent research. This year’s conference will be hosted by UCLA on Thursday, September 17 and Friday, September 18. Leah Boustan (Economics) and Sarah Reber (Public Policy) are co-organizing. The local planning committee consists of Leah Boustan, Sarah Reber, […]

So you want to be a researcher? Principles and practical data tools to help you fly transparently

SSC Computing Lab 2400 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, United States

Researchers go through fundamental steps in a data analysis project. This workshop highlights key steps in a data analyst's workflow and encourages transparency in each of the steps. Throughout this workshop, we go through hands on exercises that integrate: a transparency engine, obtaining federal API data, producing useful intermediate data structures, and sharing analysis results. […]

Reproducibility of Statistical Results

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Presented By: Mark S. Handcock (Professor, Statistics) Jeffrey B. Lewis (Professor, Political Science) Marc A. Suchard (Professor, Biomathematics, Biostatistics and Human Genetics)   Reproducibility is one of the main principles of the scientific method. This panel of scholars will discuss issues in the importance of replication of statistical results. Increasing attention is being paid to […]

NBER Cohort Studies Data Users Conference

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

CCPR is hosting the annual NBER Cohort Studies meeting which brings together researchers from different fields interested in aging related issues or in methodologies applicable to aging and has set the seeds for synergistic relationships between economists, sociologists, demographers, psychologists, epidemiologists, and MDs.  The meeting is funded in part by an NIH conference grant through […]

China Multigenerational Panel Datasets Workshop

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Co-sponsored with Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the workshop will feature the China Multigenerational Panel Dataset-Shuangcheng (CMGPD-SC), the release of which is nearing completing, as well as the previously released China Multigenerational Panel Dataset-Liaoning (CMGPD-LN).

Completing an IRB application: Common mistakes and solutions.

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Todd Franke

Professor and Chair

Department of Social Welfare

UCLA - Luskin School of Public Affairs

About: This presentation will briefly go through the initial application process, amendments and continuing reviews with a focus on working with the IRB and the understandable but common mistakes in completing the various applications. It will include information on the process of obtaining and renewing CITI training for both PI’s and Faculty Sponsors.

Practical GIS for Demography

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Content: Geographically referenced data sets are becoming increasingly common.

In spatial analysis of demographic data, three common spatial indices are used: points, lines, and polygons. Through interspersed hands on exercises, we will: obtain, shape, and visualize demographic data over space. We will briefly discuss the motivation for incorporating geographic association into downstream models.

Below is an example of what we will produce with

1) Obtain GPS locations of In-N-Out's obtained from the Google Radar API

2) Compute their generated Voronoi Tesselation to address spatial competition

3) Aggregate Census 2010 tract-level population counts into these competing geographies

No background knowledge of will be required. The exercises are introductory. We will also highlight alternative software tools to achieve similar goals, such as GrassGIS and Stata

VIEW PODCAST HERE!

NBER Cohort Studies Meeting

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

CCPR is hosting the annual NBER Cohort Studies meeting which brings together researchers from different fields interested in aging related issues or in methodologies applicable to aging and has set the seeds for synergistic relationships between economists, sociologists, demographers, psychologists, epidemiologists, and MDs. The meeting is funded in part by an NIH conference grant through NBER.

Preparing for the Job Market

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

About: Panel of speakers will focus on key points and tips for graduate students preparing for the job market both in academia and the private sector.

Devin Bunten (Ph. D candidate, Economics)

Prof. Siwei Cheng (Assistant Professor, UCLA Sociology)

Mieke Eeckhaut (CCPR Postdoc)

Rosanna Smart (Ph. D candidate, Economics)

Ilan H. Meyer & Mark S. Handcock, UCLA

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

"Innovative Sampling Approaches for Hard to Reach Populations: Design of a National Probability Study of Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisexuals, and Transgender Peoples and Network Sampling of Hard to Reach Populations"


Speakers:

Ilan H. Meyer, Williams Distinguished Senior Scholar for Public Policy at the Williams Institute

Mark S. Handcock, Professor of Statistics at UCLA and Director of the Center for Social Statistics


Description:


Come for the exciting seminar then stay for the free lunch and discussion. A seminar led by Ilan H. Meyer followed immediately by a Brown Bag Lunch led by Mark S. Handcock.

Dr. Meyer is Principal Investigator of the Generations and TransPop Surveys. Generations is a survey of a nationally representative sample of 3 generations of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals. TransPop is the first national probability sample survey of transgender individuals in the United States. Both studies attempt to obtain large nationally representative samples of hard to reach populations. Dr. Meyer will review sampling issues with LGBT populations and speak on the importance of measuring population health of LGBTs and the underlying aspects in designing a national probability survey.

From a contrasting perspective, the field of Survey Methodology is facing many challenges. The general trend of declining response rates is making it harder for survey researchers to reach their intended population of interest using classical survey sampling methods.

In the followup Brown Bag Lunch, led by Mark S. Handcock, participants will discuss statistical challenges and approaches to sampling hard to reach populations. Transgenders, for example, are a rare and stigmatized population. If the transgender community exhibits networked social behavior, then network sampling methods may be useful approaches that compliment classical survey methods.
Participants are encouraged to speak on ideas of statistical methods for surveys.

So you want to be a researcher? Principles and practical data tools to help you fly transparently

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Content: Researchers go through fundamental steps in a data analysis project. This workshop highlights key steps in a data analyst's workflow and encourages transparency in each of the steps. Throughout this workshop, we go through hands on exercises that integrate: a transparency engine, obtaining federal API data, producing useful intermediate data structures, and sharing analysis results. We will use Jupyter notebook for literate coding and if time allows demonstrate the Rstudio environment for reproducible development.

Brown Bag on Web Scraping Essentials: Bring Your Own Lunch + Website

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Brown Bag on Web Scraping Essentials: Bring Your Own Lunch + Website Presenter: Mike Tzen Abstract: In this bring your own lunch brown bag, we’ll discuss the essentials of getting data through web scraping. Most importantly, we’ll jump straight into ‘CSS Selectors’ as it's the key ingredient in telling computers how to surf the web […]

High Performance Computing for Demographers

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Presenters: Edward Moss  Assistant Director for Computing Services California Center for Population Research Mike Tzen  Assistant Director for Statistics and Methods Services California Center for Population Research    Data analysis of large and highly complex datasets is extremely resource intensive, and inadequate computing resources can cause data analysis to slow to a crawl if it’s […]

West Coast Experiments Conference, UCLA 2017

Covel Commons UCLA

The tenth annual West Coast Experiments Conference will be held at UCLA on Monday, April 24 and Tuesday, April 25, 2017, preceded by in-depth methods training workshops on Sunday, April 23. The conference registration webpage is wce2017ucla.eventbrite.com. The WCE is an annual conference that brings together leading scholars and graduate students in economics, political science and other social sciences who […]

Analysis of Complex Surveys using R and Stata

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Instructors: Michael Tzen, CCPR UCLA Andy Lin, IDRE UCLA Location: May 19, 2017 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm 4240 Public Affairs Building Abstract: In this workshop, attendees will learn how to analyze survey data while accounting for its complex survey design. Using both the R and Stata software packages, we will demonstrate how to specify […]

Research Ethics: The Use of Big Data

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

The use of big data has become increasingly common in social and health research, raising a series of new and difficult questions about research ethics.  In this informal workshop, a panel of investigators using big data for their research will describe issues that they have faced and other potential problems.  As background to this workshop, […]

Fragile Families Challenge: Getting Started Workshop

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

“Fragile Families Challenge: Getting Started Workshop” Ian Lundberg Ph.D. Student, Sociology and Social Policy,  Princeton University The Fragile Families Challenge is a scientific mass collaboration that combines predictive modeling, causal inference, and in-depth interviews in order to learn more about the lives of disadvantaged children. Fragile Families Challenge builds on the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study […]