News

IQSS Launches Geography Center

By Anonymous, February 5 2006

On May 5 the Institute for Quantitative Social Science will publicly launch its newest partner in technology, the Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA). An afternoon of short talks and a panel discussion showcasing current research applications of geographic information system (GIS) technology will be presented by Harvard faculty from a wide variety of disciplines.

Survey Says: The Science Behind Surveys

By egehrman, February 1 2006

Search the Internet for the words "survey finds," and you will come up with more than 700 websites. But headlines like "Survey finds high rate of eating disorders," "...computer attacks up," and"...ecstasy use on the increase" do not offer just interesting tidbits of information: the answers collected in surveys affect the conduct of business and government every day in profound ways.

A New Dark Age? Past IQSS Executive Director on the State of the Social Sciences

By kkriz, January 15 2006

"We are currently in the dark ages of our understanding of human behavior," contends Lee McIntyre, "because the social sciences have bowed to the forces of political ideology, both left and right."

Erica Field: Advancing Methods in Health Research

By cschmidt, January 15 2006

Erica Field's office at Harvard is big and sparse, save for a desk, some shelves, and a few personal artifacts. It's a space she will undoubtedly fill over time with the assorted collections of her budding life in academia. Today, she's getting used to her surroundings and settling into a new job as Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics.

Erica Field: Advancing Methods in Health Research

By egehrman, January 15 2006

Erica Field's office at Harvard is big and sparse, save for a desk, some shelves, and a few personal artifacts. It's a space she will undoubtedly fill over time with the assorted collections of her budding life in academia. Today, she's getting used to her surroundings and settling into a new job as Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics.

Krosnick this Year's Mindich Author

By kkriz, January 5 2006

The Institute will host this year's Eric M. Mindich Encounters with Authors Symposium on January 19 through 21.

What Animates the FDA? Reputation, says Carpenter

By egehrman, November 17 2005

The Food and Drug Administration has probably undergone more public scrutiny in recent years than any other government agency.

Barry Burden on Identity and the Gender Gap

By egehrman, October 15 2005

Anyone who has participated in or even observed an election in American politics knows that voters - even the most rational among us - tend to make choices based less on reasoned analyses of the candidates' positions than on the attitudes the candidates project and the emotions they evoke. In psychological terms, voting is considered an "affective" rather than a cognitive process.

King and Sekhon Win Top Political Science Awards

By kkriz, September 15 2005

The Midwest Political Science Association Conference is one of the two major political science conferences held each year, and each year the Association chooses one academic paper from among more than 2,500 papers to win its coveted Robert H. Durr award for the best paper applying quantitative methods to a substantive problem.

Penn leads IQSS Undergraduate Scholars Program

By sfoster, September 1 2005

Assistant Professor of Government, Maggie Penn, is the new Director of the Institute's Undergraduate Scholar's Program. Professor Penn, who received her PhD in the Social Sciences from the California Institute of Technology in 2003, majored in Economics and Applied Mathematics as an undergraduate at U.C. Berkeley.