Experimental design for social scientists

Designing Experiments for the Social Sciences

Course period:
Spring 2021: 24 March - 30 April 2021

The application for Spring 2021 is now closed.

About the course

The aim of the course is to introduce the student to experimental research in the social sciences. The course covers all elements of designing experiments, including setting up research questions connected to theory, designing the structure of the experiment, selecting appropriate measurements and planning for analysis and data- handling.

The course covers natural experiments, laboratory experiments, field experiments, interventions and experiments on the web. In addition, the course also covers reproducibility/replicability, validity, reliability, and ethical issues when conducting research on humans. Some of the concepts are illustrated by simple statistics and web-simulations.  

The course is open to PhD students and master’s students with an interest in qualitative research.