Information and registration: http://mershoncenter.osu.edu/eventcalendar/icalrepeat.detail/2014/05/06/198/-/interdisciplinary-studies-of-political-behavior-from-elections-to-protests.html
Schedule: http://mershoncenter.osu.edu/media/media/publications/misc-pdfs/Conference%20Schedule%20Mershon%20May6_7%202014.pdf
The focus of this event is the relationship between political participation and democracy in light of both theoretical understanding and empirically based research. Analyzing individual and contextual determinants of political behavior can be approached from various theoretical approaches used in political science, sociology, economics and other disciplines. Empirically, most studies in the field employ data from a single cross-national survey project (e.g World Values Survey, or European Social Survey). Yet, the wealth of existing information is much greater, as international surveys could be harmonized ex post and turned into ‘big data’ consisting of unusually large number of variables with individuals nested in countries and time periods. This is the goal of the Harmonization Project, which has selected 21 international public opinion surveys for harmonization consideration, to create online accessible, comparable measurements of social values, action and demographics with global coverage. This project, of which the May event is a part, is currently funded by both Poland’s National Science Centre and OSU’s Mershon Center, and fits the OSU Data Analytics initiative.
The Conference brings together noted scholars in the field of democracy, politics and protest, and cross-national methodology, to contribute – via lectures, presentations and discussions in a multidisciplinary forum – to furthering our understanding of democracy and political participation around the world. The Workshop is devoted to key technical issues of data comparability assessment following the harmonization of data from international public opinion survey projects.
