The Cathie Marsh Institute are proud to introduce their 2026 short courses. 

All participants will receive state of the art teaching and a lunch voucher as part of the course.

An Introduction to Quantitative Text Analysis in Social Sciences 

Taught by: Yan Wang

Location: Ellen Wilkinson Building A3.6

Abstract:  

This course provides an introduction to the quantitative analysis of text from a social science perspective, with a broad range of applications in economics, sociology, communication, and political science. It adopts an applied approach: while theoretical aspects are addressed, the primary focus is to equip students and researchers with fundamental knowledge and practical skills for analysing textual data using basic machine learning methods. The course helps participants formulate research questions that can be investigated through text data and understand the basic methodologies required to answer them. 

Prerequisites and Software Requirements: 

• Required Knowledge 

• Proficiency in the R software environment 

• Familiarity with basic statistical concepts  

• Recommended Background 

• Basic understanding of linear algebra 

• Basic knowledge of probability theory  

• Software Installation  
  Participants must install recent versions of the following software before the workshop: 

• R 

• RStudio 

Course Description

Course Structure:  
The workshop is divided into two main parts: 

• Lectures (First Half) 

• Overview of the field and its applications in social sciences 

• Fundamental principles of treating text as data 

• Basic analytical strategies and their underlying rationales 

 

• Practical Sessions (Second Half) 

• Hands-on practice using RStudio 

• Textual analysis tasks including: 

• Dictionary-based analysis 

• Classification methods 

• Clustering techniques