General description

Longitudinal approaches are more and more becoming state-of-the-art in survey research. This is not only because they are superior to cross-sectional approaches regarding possibilities for causal inference, but also because longitudinal datasets are increasingly available, and longitudinal analytic techniques are being continually developed further. Longitudinal analysis is applicable in almost any field of research, but is particularly relevant to research on ageing. In this course, principles of longitudinal research and analysis will be provided so that the students will be able to independently carry out a simple empirical analysis with the statistical software package SPSS.

Learning outcomes

After the course, the student is aware of the variety of longitudinal research questions, and be familiar with the basic analytic approaches that are suitable to each. Moreover, the student is familiar with the analysis of one selected longitudinal research question.

Contents

Programme of the course

I Basic longitudinal research questions (2 parts of a day)
1. Plenary lecture
2. Exercises to fit appropriate analysis to research question, based on published articles, in groups of two
3. Plenary presentations of solutions and discussion

II Preparing own analyses (1 part of a day)
1. Getting acquainted with the dataset provided
2. Formulation of longitudinal research question in groups of two

III Performing own analyses (2 parts of a day)
1. Plenary introduction to Generalised Estimating Equations and Mixed Models (SPSS)
2. Analyses to address formulated research question, in groups of two
3. Prepare presentations

IV Discussion of findings
1. Plenary group presentations
2. Discussion
3. Summary and closing

Evaluation

2017–2018

Teaching

Archived Teaching Schedule. Please refer to current Teaching Shedule.

DPHSFC03 Thinking Longitudinally