Social Sciences Courses
Under the heading Social Sciences, Utrecht Summer School offers courses in the fields of Migration Studies, Communication, Psychology, Linguistics and Geosciences. Our offer also includes a large selection of Data Science courses, covering subjects such as of Survey Research, Multilevel Analysis and Qualitative Statistics.
All courses include their teaching format in the course description.
55 course(s) found
Data Science in Clinical Practice
Online course
Careful data curation and analyses are essential in developing machine learning algorithms, that may usefully contribute to solving problems encountered in routine healthcare. Nevertheless, many valuable contributions never transition from the computer to the bedside. Often implementation is never attempted, or they fail to get the relevant CE marking (or equivalent local standard), or their implementation fails to elicit the intended health…
Data Stewardship
Online course
Did you ever wonder how you can improve your data management and handling? Have you ever hoped for a clean and indisputable database that you could easily share with your collaborators? Understand the art of Data Stewardship and get a handle on your data! Data could yield great value when processed intelligently for medical data science but holds great risks when processing is lost in complexity. This online Data Stewardship course will guide…
Advanced Communication Skills: Between Persuasion and Empathy
Effective communication is key for high performing professionals. If you want to bring your communication skills to the next level and work on your personal development, then this course is here for you! Two experienced professionals teach you the most valuable skills they learned themselves over the past 15 years. This course takes you beyond the ‘basics’. You will, amongst other things, learn the highlights from principle-based negotiation,…
Modeling the Dynamics of Intensive Longitudinal Data
NOTE: this course is fully booked!
This is a four-day course on how to study dynamics in intensive longitudinal data, such as ambulatory assessments (AA), experience sampling method (ESM) data, ecological momentary assessments (EMA), real time data capture, observational data or electronic daily diaries. We provide a tour of diverse modeling approaches for such data and the philosophies behind them, as well as practical experience with these…
Applied Social Robotics
Are you interested in how social robots can be implemented in daily life, for example in education, in healthcare, and in hospitality? Do you want to come up with innovative solutions for long time societal problems? And do you think robots can be part of these solutions? Then this summer school is designed for you! During this summer school, you will work in a multidisciplinary research team and learn how people interact with robots, how to…
Psychodiagnostics: Theory and Skills Training ONLINE
Online course
This summer, Utrecht University offers you a 'bridging' course in psychodiagnostics, in order to overcome deficiencies in psychodiagnostics and assessment for entering the master course Clinical Psychology. This summer course focusses on familiarizing oneself with theoretical backgrounds of psychodiagnostics, practicing skills necessary to master all stages of the diagnostic process (intake, formulating a diagnostic question, formulating…
Ecogames. Games and Play in Sustainability Awareness, Communication and Action
*** UPDATE: The first complete version of the day-to-day program, including all abstract and lecturer bios, has been published.
With the impending climate crisis and its short-term repercussions becoming more ‘tangible’ every year, popular media and especially games are increasingly moving into the center of attention. Whether these so-called ‘ecogames’ can provide new spaces to experiment with alternative forms of sustainable practices and…
Eye Tracking Research Toolbox
Eye tracking is a powerful method to study the human mind and behavior. This course will allow you to explore key concepts in eye tracking research and help you integrate it in your study. The course is divided into two components: (1) a conceptual framework to help you make better decisions when planning and executing a study, allowing you to turn eye tracking data into valuable insights; (2) a practical introduction to the challenges and trade…
Introduction to R
This workshop will introduce students to the R statistical programming language. R is a completely free and open-source programming language and environment for statistical analysis. In this course, students will learn what R is and how it differs from other statistical software packages and programming languages. They will learn the basics of data I/O, manipulation, and visualisation in R. We will also cover basic statistical analyses such as t…
Structural Equation Modelling in Mplus
If you expect to work with the software Mplus, this course can help you to get started! This online course is a compact 1-day workshop introducing Mplus. We will focus on preparing data for Mplus, introducing common model syntax, avoiding common mistakes, interpreting output, and dealing with common error messages. Practice exercises demonstrate multiple regression and factor analysis models, which are the basis structural equation models in…
Introduction to JASP and (Bayesian) Hypotheses Evaluation - Free for employees of the Faculty Social Sciences of Utrecht University (FSS-UU)
Since 2018 the first year bachelorstudents of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences of Utrecht University learn to work with JASP and how to (Bayesianly) evaluate hypotheses using JASP. The course is tailored to lecturers and researchers who want to learn what the bachelor students of FSBS learn about JASP and (Bayesian) hypotheses evaluation (and a little bit more). This course is applied, hands-on, and build around concepts and not…
Introduction to Python
If you are looking for a powerful programing language you should learn Python, a language with a simple syntax, and a powerful set of libraries. It is easy for beginners to learn Python and widely use it in many scientific areas for data exploration. This workshop is an introduction to the Python programming language and in particular is geared towards people new to the language and who may, or may not, have experience with other programming…
Regression in R
Linear regression is one of the most ubiquitous statistical methods. Most statistical techniques can be viewed as either special cases of linear regression (e.g., t-tests, ANOVA) or generalisations of linear regression (e.g., multilevel modelling, SEM, neural networks, GLM, survival analysis). In this course, students will learn how to apply linear regression techniques in R. We will cover (multiple) linear regression, categorical predictor…
Missing Data in R
Missing data are ubiquitous in nearly every data analytic enterprise. Simple ad-hoc techniques for dealing with missing values such as deleting incomplete cases or replacing missing values with the item mean can cause a host of (hidden) problems. In this workshop, we will discuss principled methods for treating missing data and how to apply these methods in R. We will cover basic missing data theory, methods for exploring/quantifying the extent…
Text Analysis with Python
This course introduces the basic concepts of text analysis in Python. In this course, participants will learn how to apply text mining methods on text data and analyse them in a pipeline with machine learning and natural language processing algorithms. The course has a strongly practical hands-on focus, and participants will gain experience in using text mining on real data.
Learning to Unlearn Decolonially - Disobeying, Delinking and Relinking
Coloniality of knowledge, aesthetics and spirituality are areas of experience managed and controlled by major Western institutions. The combination of institutions and languages secured the belief in the universality of Western knowledge, aesthetics, beliefs and its peculiar 'rational' world-view. It also drove the appropriation and destitution of non-western knowledges, aesthesis and spiritualities. The seminar will be devoted to explore…
Data Science: Statistical Programming with R
This course offers an elaborate introduction to statistical programming with R. Students learn to operate R, form pipelines for data analysis, make high quality graphics, fit, assess, and interpret a variety of statistical models, and do advanced statistical programming. The statistical theory in this course covers t-testing, regression models for linear, dichotomous, ordinal, and multivariate data, statistical inference, statistical learning,…
Introduction to GIS for Human and Behavioral Scientists
The objective of the course is to provide students, that have a background in social, human or behavioral sciences, with an introduction to GIS (Geographic Information Systems). This course aims at highlighting the specific qualities of GIS regarding visualisation and combination of datasets with a spatial component. Several topics will be covered, such as introduction to ArcGIS 10.4 and a presentation of data and results.
Introduction to Structural Equation Modeling using lavaan (E-Learning Course)
In this e-learning course, we will cover the basics of structural equation modeling (SEM) using the R package lavaan. Participants will learn how to interact with the lavaan software and how to run common types of SEMs (e.g., path models, confirmatory factor analyses, latent regression models, multiple group models) using lavaan. No prior knowledge of lavaan is necessary, but some experience with R and SEM (although not strictly required) is…
Cognitive Neuropsychology: From Patients to Functional Models
As an advanced training in Cognitive Neuropsychology, the course aims to teach PhD students how to collect and interpret patient data in order to test cognitive theories and build cognitive models. The emphasis will be on 'doing research'. Candidates will get an acquaintance with standard neuropsychological testing, will be shown examples of patients cases, case statistics and will build, run and analyse their own experiment. A special training…
Hands-on GIS for Earth Scientists
This course is a hands-on course on GIS with two weeks of practicals in the GIS Lab of the faculty of Geosciences. The following topics will be covered: Working with ArcGIS Pro and Spatial Analyst, Modelbuilder and Python, automatic DEM extraction of stereo aerial photographs using Erdas Imagine eATE and Agisoft, Mobile GIS / GPS data collection, local/global datasets and datatypes, and poster making.
Research design for Experimental Linguists - Uil OTS
This course is essential for experimental linguists. In this course you will learn about important aspects of a quantitative study design (research methodology), the basics of statistical (hypothesis) testing, and how methodology and statistics relate to each other. This discussion-based course will teach you to make funded decisions throughout the research process, and consequently conduct better research with valid and reliable outcomes.
Migration, Integration and Ethnic Relations
During this course, we discuss social scientific theories and empirical research on international migration, the socio-economic and cultural integration of immigrants and their children, and reactions of the host society. Migration has made European countries ethnically and culturally more diverse. While migrants try to find their way in a new and sometimes hostile environment, host populations also have to adapt to migrants and the new…
European Encounters: Diversity and Integration from West to East
This track is a joint programme on European integration by the Summer School of Utrecht University and the University of Latvia. The aim of the course is to introduce the diversity and unity of European identities, the European Union, (shared) foreign policy, security dilemmas and new challenges. The course delves into the different and diverse political and economic perspectives that can be found in Europe, and provides an insight into the…
Introduction to Structural Equation Modeling using Mplus
We offer a 5-day course on how to perform basic SEM analyses using Mplus. The main objective of this course is to learn how to analyse several models with Mplus (e.g., path models, multiple group models, mediation and moderation, confirmatory factor analysis, and longitudinal models). No previous knowledge of Mplus is assumed, but prior knowledge of SEM, although not mandatory, will make this course more useful.
Soft Skills for (Future) Diplomats and Peacebuilders
Are you an (aspiring) diplomat or peacebuilder? And do you have ideals for a better world? And would you like to work on your communication and personal leadership skills? Then this is the place for you! During this summer school a seasoned diplomat and an experienced peacebuilder, both with lots of training experience, will work with you on the soft skills that you need in order to contribute to making this world a safer, more peaceful and more…
LANDac Annual Summer School "Land Governance for Development"
Welcome to the LANDac (the Netherlands Land Academy) Annual Summer School “Land Governance for Development”. Large-scale acquisition of land in the Global South has received a great deal of interest in the last few years. This course provides a multidisciplinary analysis of the ‘land rush’ within the more general context of land governance in Africa, Asia and Latin America. We will look at the history and drivers, the diversity of stakeholders…
Introduction to Multilevel Analysis
This course will teach you the theoretical basics of multilevel modelling and some important methodological and statistical issues. You will also learn how to analyse multilevel data sets with the HLM, Mplus and R programmes, to interpret the output and to report the results. The benefits of multilevel analysis are discussed both in theory as with empirical examples. This course restricts to a quantitative (i.e. continuous) outcome variable.…
Global Health Ethics & Equity
This summer course will focus on urgent topics in global health ethics and equity. With an enthusiastic team of experts from all over the world, we will discuss the major challenges to health equity in the world at this moment as well as potential solutions. This programme is a collaboration between the University Medical Center Utrecht and the Royal Tropical Institute.
Sense making of GPS Data in a GIS environment
This course focuses on the application of GIS Tools to analyse outdoor movements of people or animals. The objective is to provide students with insight in the principles of sense making of GPS Data in a GIS environment. Collection of travel/movement data is nowadays made easy through the use of GPS-loggers and Smartphones. This course focusses to how to collect, clean and enrich these datasets with GIS by combining locational data with existing…
Contemporary Conflict Analysis: Actors, Issues & Technologies of 21st Century Warfare
This course equips scholars and professionals alike with cutting-edge knowledge and transferable skills for mapping, analysing and responding to warfare in the 21st century.
Throughout the course we will address pressing questions like: How are terrorist organisations able to mobilize people towards violent action? Why do states deploy starvation and sieges as a weapon of war? Why do states outsource violence to paramilitaries and special…
Teaching through English in an international classroom: CLIL and EMI
This course will not take place this year.
A professional development course for teachers and lecturers working through English who would like to improve their CLIL/EMI* methodology skills. Participants will develop and improve their understanding, expertise and skills related to CLIL in higher education. Quotes from previous participants: "It was exactly what I was looking for!", "The course was useful for me to practice teaching in English,…
Advanced Multilevel Analysis
This three-day course will teach you advanced topics in multilevel modelling. It builds upon the contents of the other summer school course “Introduction to multilevel analysis”. It consists of three days with lectures in the morning and computer labs in the afternoon. After taking this course, you should be able to analyse more complex multilevel models and to interpret and report the results.
Data Science: Introduction to Text Mining with R
Applications of text mining are everywhere: social media, web search, advertising, emails, customer service, healthcare, marketing, etc. In this course, students will learn how to apply text mining methods on text data and analyse them in a pipeline with statistical learning algorithms. The course has a strongly practical hands-on focus, and students will gain experience in using and interpreting text mining on data examples from humanities,…
Advanced Course on using Mplus
This is a five-day course on structural equation modelling (SEM) using Mplus. If you already know how to analyse your data in Mplus but want to learn more about what you are actually doing, and especially if you want to know more about advanced longitudinal analyses, this course is for you. The course consists of in-depth lectures on the fundamentals of Mplus and advanced longitudinal models.
Data Science: Multiple Imputation in Practice
This four-day course teaches you the basics in solving your own missing data problems appropriately. Participants will learn how to form imputation models, how to combine data sets, how to model non-response, how to use diagnostics to inspect the imputed values, how to obtain valid inference on incomplete data and how to avoid many of the pitfalls associated with real-life missing data problems.
Data Science: Data Analysis
The course Data science: Data Analysis offers a range of techniques and algorithms from statistics, machine learning and data mining to make predictions about future events and to uncover hidden structures in data. The course has a strong practical focus: participants actively learn how to apply these techniques to real data and how to interpret their results. The course covers both classical and modern topics in data analysis.
Data Science: Programming with Python
Python has become the dominant programming language used in data science. This course offers an introduction to computational thinking about data-related problems and the implementation of data analysis programmes with Python. It starts at the very basics and is explicitly intended for students who have no or only little programming experience.
Network Science
How can networks help us understand and predict social systems? How to find important individuals and communities? How to predict unobserved connections between genes? How to learn the dependencies between interrelated entities? How can we stop disease spreading in networks? In this course, we provide participants with the conceptual and practical skills necessary to use network science tools to answer social, economic and biological questions.
Data Science: Applied Text Mining
This course introduces the basic and advanced concepts and ideas in text mining and natural language processing. In this course, students will learn how to apply text mining methods on text data and analyse them in a pipeline with machine learning and deep learning algorithms. The course has a strongly practical hands-on focus, and students will gain experience in using text mining on real data from social sciences, humanities, and healthcare…
Coaching Skills for Young Leaders
Are you a student or a young professional and do you want to acquire or deepen your coaching skills? Then this Summer School is for you. This course will teach you the empathic coaching skills you need as a coach or a leader. In every session you will learn and practice with powerful coaching tools, from parts work to empathy skills. But you will not just be coaching others. You will be embarking on a journey of self discovery and personal…
Conflict Resolution and Mediation Skills
This course provides you with a challenging introduction to conflict resolution and mediation skills. The focus of the course is to familiarize yourself with the backgrounds of human conflict behaviour and to practice skills that enable you to resolve your own conflicts and to act as a mediator in conflict between others. Important topics are your own conflict behaviour, the mediation process, the skills and the attitude of the mediator.
Bilingualism - UiL OTS
Ask someone their opinion on bilingualism and you are likely to hear statements such as: 'learning two languages from birth confuses children and impairs their cognitive development', 'Bilingual children can't speak either of their two languages properly' or 'You can only become bilingual if you start acquiring your second language as a young child.' Though common currency among the general public, each of these statements is in fact a myth. In…
Applied Multivariate Analysis
The summer school course 'Applied Multivariate Analysis' offers hands-on experience using SPSS for the most frequently encountered multivariate statistical techniques in the social and behavioural sciences. The emphasis is on applying multivariate techniques using the computer programme SPSS, and on how to interpret the SPSS output in substantive terms. During the course, we do not discuss the mathematical details of these techniques.
Understanding Internationalisation: Higher Education in a Changing Global Context
The changing global context is affecting higher education and urging universities to rethink internationalization. While missions and challenges may be global, views may diverge across countries, regions, and beyond traditional West-East / North-South frames. What views are actually driving the various communities internal to the university and those of our external partners and stakeholders? How are these views being shaped and what are the…
Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology - UiL OTS
In this course we will investigate sound in language from 5 different perspectives: alphabet (units), acoustics, articulation, prosody and learning. These complementary perspectives together show how language uses a relatively narrow range of sounds (although this range is broader than you might think!) but does so in a very intricate way. In addition, languages’ sound systems are intimately linked to other aspects of the linguistic system:…
Survey Research: Design, Implementation and Data Processing
Changes in technology and society strongly influence modern survey research. This course covers the essentials of modern survey methodology, organized by the Department of Methodology and Statistics. Central to the course is survey quality and the reduction of Total Survey Error (coverage, sampling, nonresponse, including questionnaire and mode effects), while balancing logistics and survey costs. Best practice guidelines for surveys from design…
Introduction to Generative Syntax - UiL OTS
In this course, students will be introduced to the basics of generative linguistics, the theoretical framework evolved from and based on Noam Chomsky’s work. The formal tools of generative linguistics enable linguists to explore the complex and fascinating system underlying sentence structure and sentence meaning. The theory accounts for the creativity of human language and other characteristics that make it unlike the communication system of…
Developmental Psychopathology and Psychological Assessment in Childhood and Adolescence
This course provides students with theoretical knowledge on developmental psychopathology. Students acquire knowledge on most common problems in youth, age specific characteristics of psychopathology and developmental transactional explanatory models for youth psychopathology. Students will also acquire theoretical and applied knowledge on psychological assessment and diagnostic decision-making processes. Students will get acquainted with some…
Introduction to Semantics in L1 and L2 Acquisition - UiL OTS
This course introduces the basics of (formal) semantics and first and second language (L1/L2) acquisition as well as the interface between them. Days 1 and 2 are devoted to the introduction of a broad panorama of acquisition theories, Day 3 provides an introduction to semantics and on Days 4 and 5 we look into a number of semantic case studies in acquisition.
A Gentle Introduction to Bayesian Statistics
NOTE: this course is fully booked! New applicants will be placed on a waiting list.
This course introduces all the essential ingredients needed to start Bayesian inference or model selection. We discuss specifying priors, obtaining the posterior, prior/posterior predictive checking, and sensitivity analyses. We also discuss evaluating hypotheses via the Bayes Factor, using information criteria and aggregating evidence from multiple studies. We…
Survey Research: Statistical Analysis and Estimation
The course is based on a total survey error perspective and discusses the major sources of survey error. Participants will be presented with tools for detection and adjustment of such errors. Analysis methods are introduced using both SPSS and R. Topics include complex sampling, nonresponse adjustment, measurement error, analysis of incomplete data and advanced use of administrative data. Special attention will be given to the analysis of…
Psycholinguistics - UiL OTS
This elementary to intermediate level course will provide the student with a basic knowledge of psycholinguistics, a research domain on the intersection of linguistics, psychology and neuroscience. Three major research topics in psycholinguistics will be presented: language comprehension, language production and (first) language acquisition. In addition, we will discuss language disorders, both acquired (aphasia) and innate (developmental…
AI-Aided Systematic Reviewing
Please note: this course is almost fully booked!
More and more researchers rely upon Systematic Reviews: attempts to synthesize the state of the art in a particular scientific field. However, the scientific output of the world doubles every nine years. In this tsunami of new knowledge, there is not enough time to read everything – resulting in costly, abandoned or error-prone work. Using the latest methods from the field of Artificial…
Advanced Survey Design
This course has been postponed until 2023. It is scheduled to take place from 28 August – 1 September 2023. It will be possible to register for the course from December 2022 onwards
This course in ‘advanced survey design’ takes students beyond the introductory courses and will discuss the state of the art in both the design and the analysis of survey data. We discuss new ways to analyse modern surveys, including non-probability survey designs,…