The 11^th Summer School in Applied Social Science Research Methods (Advanced Courses) was successfully held online from July 15 to July 31, 2022.

Over the past decade, the Summer School program has become one of the most recognized and original summer programs in the field of quantitative social science methods in China. This is the second time that the program was jointly organized by the Center for Applied Social and Economic Research (CASER) at NYU Shanghai with the Center for Data and Urban Science (CENDUS) at Shanghai University.

This highly selective program is open to scholars and students from all over the world. Although the classes were conducted online, participants have a high level of exposure and engagement in the small class teaching mode.

During the past three weeks, 56 scholars and students with diverse backgrounds from 33 universities and institutions representing 6 countries (including China, Australia, Belgium, Singapore, U.K. and U.S.) attended the intensive program.

From July 15 to July 19, Yongjun Zhang, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Institute for Advanced Computational Science at the State University of New York (Stony Brook) presented the course Introduction to Computational Social Science. The courses offered a survey of methods and techniques commonly used in computational social science and introduced a pipeline of conducting computational social science research in different settings such as cloud computing.

During the second week from July 21 to July 25, Hongwei Xu, Associate Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York (CUNY) – Queens College, taught the course Spatial Data Analysis in Social Sciences, which introduced spatial data analysis applied in multiple social science disciplines including sociology, demography, epidemiology, public health, political science, and biostatistics.

Introduction to Applied Bayesian Regression Analysis, the final course of the summer school program, taught from July 27 to July 31 by Jun Xu, Professor of Sociology and Data Science at Ball State University introduced the conceptual background, computational procedures, and statistical techniques for doing Bayesian regression analysis, with a focus on application and interpretation.

“The summer school has provided me a great launching point into computational research. It has made quantitative methods much more approachable for me and has opened my eyes to future possibilities.” Commented Marco Laghi, Master Student from University of Pennsylvania, “The class environment was very positive and supportive, allowing for open conversation and an overall very nice flow!”

“I am pleased that we have put down roots of this decade-long summer program at NYU Shanghai. The small-size class in English taught by internationally recognized experts will help to improve the quality of students’ learning and enhance the reputation of the our center”, said Professor Xiaogang Wu, the Yufeng Global Professor of Social Science and the Director of the Center for Applied Social and Economic Research (CASER).