On July 4th 2019, the Young Scholars Network organized a PhD Summer Workshop day in Amsterdam. The day included two workshops – in the morning an introduction to R and an afternoon workshop about improving statistical inferences.
In the morning we started with an introduction to R by Dr. Kasper Welbers (and also developed by Dr. Wouter van Atteveldt, VU Amsterdam). Kasper taught us the basics of working with R, what the advantages are over programs like SPSS, and the different ways in which R can be used for data analysis, text analysis and visualization. The PhDs already practiced a little bit in R and received a hub with useful instructions from which they can continue learning to work with R.
After lunch, Dr. Daniel Lakens gave a workshop focused on statistics. We discussed common issues with statistical inference in social sciences. Topics such as well-designed studies, hypotheses, asking the right research question, effect size calculation and power analysis were discussed. Dr. Lakens definitely gave us some food for thought that hopefully will results in better study designs and statistical analyses in our dissertations.
The day concluded with networking drinks for PhDs at the university café, where we had a chance to further discuss what we had learned during the day. We were very happy to receive positive feedback from participating PhDs and want to thank all attendees and tutors for the interesting Summer Workshop Day!
The organizers (Anne Roos Smink and Joanna Strycharz)
