Third LCSR Summer School Finished
More than forty young researchers from Russia, the CIS, and several European countries took part in the summer school. The main course, dedicated to multilevel structural equation modeling, was taught by Hermann Dülmer from GESIS — Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences. Two years ago, when Professor Dülmer lectured on multilevel regressive analysis in his course ‘Multilevel Analysis in Comparative Studies’ during the first LCSR summer school, the students were not familiar with complicated techniques of statistical analysis, according to Eduard Ponarin, LCSR Manager. However, over the last two years, regular and associated staff members of the Laboratory have done a great job in mastering basic techniques ofstructural equation modeling, which is much more complicated than the usual multilevel regressive analysis.
A regular progress report conference of the LCSR international research network also took place during the school time. At the report session, the participants of the network shared information about recent results from their projects, implemented as a part of the Russian government scholarship programme. In addition to this, applicants for membership to the research network also presented their works.
The programme of the summer school included not only courses on methods of statistical analysis but also guest lectures by prominent foreign sociologists, on both the theoretical and methodological aspects of social processes research. Francesco Sarracino from the National Institute of Statistics of Luxembourg lectured on three different subjects. He spoke on the subject of his recently published book, which concerns methods of measuring happiness. The second lecture ofFrancesco Sarracino was dedicated to methods of visual presentation of survey results obtained via Stata by means of the text editor LaTeX. The third lecture by the scientist concerned the processing of missing or absent data.
Malina Voicu from GESIS — Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences lectured on gender attitudes in Europe. Her work hasn’t been published yet, but according to Eduard Ponarin, it will make an impressive article. Bogdan Voicu from Romanian Academy of Sciences shared the results of his research project on integration characteristics of highly skilled immigrants in societies. Usually, research into immigration focuses on low-skilled immigrants, but Bogdan Voicu fills this gap with his research work.
Summing up the results of the summer school, Eduard Panarin described it as very well organized. This third summer school finished a three-year cycle of LCSR summer schools dedicated to the research of multilevel analysis and structural equation modeling. The topic of next year’s school is still subject to discussion, but Information about the 2014 summer school will be provided on the web page of the Laboratory.
Ekaterina Turanova, specially for HSE News Service