Empirical Research Methods Workshops

What is D-Lab? And What Does It Have to Do with the Study of Law?

JUSTIN MCCRARY

Date: 02/13/2015
Duration: 01:28
Description: In What is D-Lab? And What Does It Have to Do with the Study of  Law?, Justin McCrary, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley and Director of  the Social Science Data Laboratory, or D-Lab, explained D-Lab’s role  in facilitating empirical work for UC Berkeley faculty, graduate students, and advanced graduate students, with a focus on addressing the extent to which the new resources being offered through D-Lab make it easier to answer existing empirical legal studies questions and to pose new ones. Workshop materials: Powerpoint slides

Using Video Records to Analyze Interactions

Nikki Jones, Geoffrey Raymond, and Kirstin Precoda

Date: 04/04/2014
Description: In Using Video Records to Analyze Interactions, Nikki Jones, Associate Professor of African American Studies, UC Berkeley, Geoffrey Raymond, Associate Professor of Sociology, UC Santa Barbara, and Kirstin Precoda, Director, Speech Technology and Research Lab, SRI International discuss ways to gather, organize and analyze video records, including video records that have been gathered by non-social scientists for other purposes, and illustrate ways to code video records for statistical analysis from their study of police-citizen encounters.

Principal-Agent Models of Legal Institutions

Sean Gailmard

Date: 03/15/2013
Description: “Principal-Agent Models of Legal Institutions” was led by Sean Gailmard, Associate Professor of Political Science, Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies (BELS) Faculty Fellow, CSLS, Berkeley Law, UCB. Drawing on game theory to represent situations in which one actor attempts to induce another actor to take a favorable decision on his or her behalf, this family of models has become an increasingly important perspective in analysis of law and lawmaking institutions. Workshop materials: Gailmard reading, Powerpoint slides

Ethnography of the Global

Sally Engle Merry

Date: 02/01/2013
Description: In “Ethnography of the Global”,  Sally Engle Merry, Professor of Anthropology (Institute for Law and Society), New York University Law School explores four methods of studying the global through ethnography, using empirical data from her research on gender violence and human rights. Workshop materials:  Marcus reading, Merry, Measuring the World, Merry, Transnational Human Rights

The Spatial Model of Voting: Theory and Empirics

Kevin Quinn

Date: 11/16/2012
Description: In “The Spatial Model of Voting: Theory and Empirics”,  Kevin Quinn, Professor of Law, Berkeley Law provides a tour of this line of research and draws connections from the relevant literature in political science to issues of interest to scholars of law and legal institutions. Workshop materials: Powerpoint slides

Survey Research in an Era of Diversity, Polarization, and Technological Change

Taeku Lee

Date: 03/21/2012
Description: In “Survey Research in an Era of Diversity, Polarization, and Technological Change”, Taeku Lee, Professor of Political Science and Law, and Department Chair, U.C. Berkeley, asks, in light of the challenges posed in the title, what can public opinion surveys tell us (or fail to tell us), and what is their relevance to social and political research? Lee provides an overview of sampling, measurement, the psychology of survey response, and the design of questionnaires.

Connecting Qualitative and Quantitative Methods: Close Encounters — of What Kind?

David Collier

Date: 01/27/2012
Description: In “Connecting Qualitative and Quantitative Methods:  Close Encounters — of What Kind?”, David Collier, Chancellor’s Professor of Political Science, Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science, U.C. Berkeley, addresses current debates on multi-method research in political and social science. The workshop considers the implications of various perspectives for methodologically-informed research, focusing both on concept-formation and measurement, and on causal inference. Workshop bibliography.

Social Network Analysis in Sociolegal Research

John Hipp

Date: 09/23/2011
Description: In “Social Network Analysis in Sociolegal Research,” John Hipp, Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Society; Planning, Policy and Design; and Sociology, University of California, Irvine, demonstrates how social networks are a powerful theoretical and methodological approach that can provide new insights into sociolegal research. These measures can capture, among other thing, the position of individuals in the network, as well as the overall structure of the network.

Comparative Socio-legal Research

David Nelken

Date: 04/01/2011
Description: In “Comparative Socio-legal Research“, David Nelken, Distinguished Professor of Legal Institutions and Social Change, University of Macerata, Italy, and Distinguished Research Professor of Law, University of Cardiff, Wales, discusses how to grasp, create and handle data relevant to this cross-cultural type of understanding. Drawing on his experience moving from the UK to Italy, he asks about the meaning and applicability of the concept of legal culture more generally, and the possibilities and consequences of attempts to impose global prescriptions and standards.

Legal History and/or History in Law

Hendrik (Dirk) Hartog

Date: 01/28/2011
Description: In “Legal History and/or History in Law“, Hendrik (Dirk) Hartog, Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty,  Professor of History, and  Director, Program in American Studies, Princeton University explains the different streams of scholarly practices that are mixed and matched within the broad subject entitled “legal history.” Workshop material: Robert Gordon’s “Critical Legal Histories.”

Experimental Design Strategies

Robert MacCoun

Date: 11/05/2010
Description: Professor Robert MacCoun, Professor of Law and Public Policy, U.C. Berkeley, led a workshop entitled “Experimental Design Strategies.” Experimental methods remain the most powerful method for testing causal hypotheses in empirical legal studies.  In this workshop, MacCoun stipulates that experimentation creates tradeoffs with respect to real-world generalizability, and instead focuses on designing experiments that are maximally informative for testing theory. Workshop materials:   Workshop slides

The ABCs of Data Management: Sampling, Weights, and Missing Data

Su Li

Date: 04/09/2010
Description:  “The ABCs of Data Management: Sampling, Weights, and Missing Data (using STATA),” was led by Su Li, Research Methodologist/Statistician, Berkeley Law.  This workshop introduces participants to the basics of data cleaning while addressing the most commonly seen data management issues and problems.

Using Old and New Media as Data Sources

Jennifer S Earl

Date: 03/05/2010
Description: In “Using Old and New Media as Data Sources,” Jennifer S. Earl, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the PhD Emphasis in Technology and Society, University of California, Santa Barbara, explains that using older media (e.g., newspapers) and new media (e.g., websites) requires sensitivity to the production dynamics of specific media, which can affect how the source records, represents, and archives social life. Workshop materials: Powerpoint slides

Doing Story-Based Research in Socio-Legal Studies

Michael Musheno and Steven Maynard-Moody

Date: 11/06/2009
Description: In “Doing Story-Based Research in Socio-Legal Studies,” Michael Musheno, Department of Criminal Justice, SFSU and Distinguished Affiliated Scholar at CSLS and Steven Maynard-Moody, Director, Institute for Policy and Social Research, University of Kansas, ask a series of questions, beginning with Why do story-based research in socio-legal studies? And include narrative responses to these questions from a number of socio-legal scholars around the country as well as their own ideas and data. Workshop materials: Bibliography, Queries and Scholars’ Answers, Two stories

How to Design Research to Evaluate Programs

Justin McCrary

Date: 04/03/2009
Description: In How to Design Research to Evaluate Programs, Justin McCrary, Professor of Law and Co-Director, Law and Economics Program, University of California, Berkeley considers how to design research to evaluate programs by focusing on a particular example, the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) Clean Slate Program, which seeks to help individuals through the legal process of clearing a conviction from their criminal record. Workshop material: Powerpoint Lecture

GIS, Analytical Mapping, and Spatial Modeling: Crime, Law and Society Applications

Robert N. Parker

Date: 01/30/2009
Description:

Robert Nash Parker, co-director of the Presley Center for Crime and Justice Studies, University California, Riverside presented a workshop on GIS, Analytical Mapping, and Spatial Modeling: Crime, Law and Society Applications. The workshop provides an introduction to the art and science of GIS, software for creating geo-spatial data bases, maps, and estimating spatially appropriate models.
Workshop materials: PowerPoint Lecture  GIS Workshop Examples Instructions 2008-09

Using Atlas.ti for Qualitative Research

Yuki Kato, Danielle S. Rudes

Date: 10/09/2008
Description: In Using Atlas.ti for Qualitative Research, Yuki Kato, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Tulane University and Danielle S. Rudes, Assistant Professor of Administration of Justice and Sociology at George Mason University, introduce participants to the software and answer some common questions beginning users confront.  The afternoon (not on video) involved some hands-on practice with basic feature of Atlas.ti. Workshop materials: Guidebook to Atlas.ti, Powerpoint lecture, Powerpoint, part II.  For more information, visit the Atlas.ti website at  http://www.atlasti.com.

The Art and Science of Interviewing

Kristin Luker

Date: 04/10/2008
Description: The Art and Science of Interviewing, was led by Kristin Luker, Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology, U.C. Berkeley. The “long”, “unstructured,” “semi-structured,” “intensive” interview has a long and honorable history in the social sciences, but it is usually taught by apprenticeship rather than by scholarly attention. This workshop draws on new discoveries in cognitive science to discuss the planning, shaping and administering of this kind of interview, and provides helpful suggestions about analysis.

An Introduction to Survey Research

Tom Piazza

Date: 02/21/2008
Description: Tom Piazza from UC Berkeley’s Survey Research Center provided An Introduction to Survey Research. After reviewing the steps involved in conducting surveys, he discusses the sampling process in more detail and the design of questionnaires. Workshop materials: Overview of the Survey Process, Introduction to Survey Sampling, General Comments on Questionnaire Design, Retrospective Surveys – Problems and Solutions, The Steps of Survey Research – Procedures and Potential Errors, Short Bibliography on Survey Research

Historical-Comparative Methods

Robin Stryker

Date: 10/23/2007
Description: In Historical-Comparative Methods, Robin Stryker, then Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, provides an introduction to systematic case-oriented narrative and comparative methods for socio-legal research. Workshop materials: Bibliography, Powerpoint Lecture, Historical-Comparative Methods 

Systematic Qualitative Fieldwork

Calvin Morrill

Date: 09/18/2007
Description: Calvin Morrill, then Professor of Sociology at UC Irvine, presented the first workshop in the series, on Systematic Qualitative Fieldwork. The general aim of this workshop is to broaden and sharpen participants’ methodological imaginations and skills using techniques generally used to generate and analyze data that are not normally tapped by or amenable to survey research, demographic techniques, or experimental procedures, but which can be used, with appropriate sensitivities, in conjunction with these methods.  Drawing on examples from ethnographies of disputing in corporations, legal consciousness and conflict in schools and urban settings, Morrill illustrates how to systematically approach ethnographic data collection, data analysis, and writing. Workshop Materials: Slides at Seminar in the Practice of Qualitative Fieldwork – Part I  and Seminar in the Practice of Qualitative Fieldwork – Part II; Ethnographic and Qualitative Field Methods course syllabus, co-taught with David Snow at UCIrvine, available here.