Swiss Summer School 2012
Olga Basmanova’s report on her scientific trip to Lugano
16th Swiss Summer School on social science methods took place in Lugano (Switzerland) on August, 17-31. Olga Basmanova, research-assistant at the LCSR, participated in one of the school’s workshops and now she shares her impressions of this event.
The venue of Swiss Summer School was chosen very successfully. Lugano situates in picturesque canton Ticino on the south of Switzerland, right near the Italian boarder. Every summer in University of Lugano (Università della Svizzera Italiana )many social scientists from all Europe come together to participate in series of workshops which are devoted to applying methods in social science.
I took a part in the workshop on correspondence analysis and related methods, which was read by professor Jorg Blasius from the University of Bonn. Correspondence analysis is a statistical technique which is conceptually similar to principal component analysis, but applies categorical rather than continuous data. The main feature and advantage of correspondence analysis is that it helps to explore data structure. Using this technique researcher can draw a picture of the distribution of answer patterns among the respondents and understand which of these patterns prevail in different social groups. Classes started at 8.30 and lasted till the evening. Morning and afternoon sessions was dedicated to theoretical lectures and empirical examples. Evening classes took place in the computer lab where workshop participants could replicate afternoon examples or make manipulation with their own data.
An advantage of such events is international academic environment that surrounds you. Most of the Summer School participants were Swiss and German, but to my pleasant surprise there was my compatriot among participants, who leaves in Switzerland for a long time. Despite tough schedule, we managed to make friends with guys from our group. I hope that I will have a chance to cooperate with them in my future research.
by Olga Basmanova