Methods Bites

Using TikTok ads for survey recruitment: a step-by-step approach

2023-09-15 24 min read tutorials [Zaza Zindel Simon Lütkewitte]

TikTok’s rapid growth and diverse user base present social science researchers with a unique opportunity to study a large and varied population, gaining valuable insights into their attitudes and behaviors. Unlike platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, TikTok’s potential in survey recruitment has been relatively underexplored. The platform’s cost-effective reach and detailed targeting parameters make it particularly appealing for reaching traditionally hard-to-reach or rare populations. Furthermore, with its video-centric format and predominantly young user base, TikTok provides a means to engage and attract respondents from younger generations to participate in online surveys. In this Methods Bites Tutorial, Zaza Zindel and Simon Lütkewitte (Bielefeld University) provide a step-by-step guide on how to use TikTok ads for survey recruitment. Continue reading

Collection, Management, and Analysis of Twitter Data

2022-06-02 18 min read tutorials Andreas Küpfer

As a highly relevant platform for political and social online interactions, researchers increasingly analyze Twitter data. As of 01/2021, Twitter renewed its API, which now includes access to the full history of tweets for academic usage. In this Methods Bites Tutorial, Andreas Küpfer (Technical University of Darmstadt & MZES) presents a walkthrough of the collection, management, and analysis of Twitter data. Continue reading

Survey data collection from start to finish

2022-04-11 22 min read instructionals Joshua Hellyer

Surveys have long been a staple of social science research on individuals’ attitudes and behaviors. In recent years, however, we have witnessed a strong shift from secondary analyses of large general social surveys toward smaller, more targeted primary data collections. This development has been accompanied by the increasing availability of affordable and easy-to-implement surveys using online access panels. While the entry barriers to original survey-based research are now likely lower than ever before, it still comes with notable methodological, administrative, and logistic challenges. To help aspiring survey researchers navigate this process, this Methods Bites Instructional by Joshua Hellyer (MZES, University of Mannheim) provides a comprehensive guide to survey data collection with online access panels. Continue reading

Using Web Logs and Smartphone Records for Social Research

2020-04-14 13 min read instructionals [Ruben Bach]

How can social scientists collect and analyze web logs – records of individuals’ browsing behavior – for their own research? In this Methods Bites Instructional Blog Post, Ruben Bach summarizes some key insights of his talk in the MZES Social Sciences Data Lab in December 2019. The blog post discusses how to obtain and extract information from web logs and related data, shows how they can be used for social research, and concludes with a short discussion of how to handle “big data” extracted from web logs. Continue reading

Studying Politics on and with Wikipedia

2019-08-26 25 min read tutorials [Denis Cohen Nick Baumann Simon Munzert]

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia, together with its sibling, the collaboratively edited knowledge base Wikidata, provides incredibly rich yet largely untapped sources for political research. In this Methods Bites Tutorial, Denis Cohen and Nick Baumann offer a hands-on recap of Simon Munzert’s (Hertie School of Governance) workshop materials to show how these platforms can inform research on public attention dynamics, policies, political and other events, political elites, and parties, among other things. Continue reading

Quantitative Analysis of Political Text

2019-07-22 9 min read tutorials [Julian Bernauer Denise Traber]

How can we infer actors’ positions, substantive topics, or sentiments from (political) texts? This Methods Bites Tutorial by Julian Bernauer summarizes Denise Traber’s workshop in the MZES Social Science Data Lab in Spring 2018. Using exemplary sets of political documents (election manifestos and coalition agreements), it showcases tools of QTA for a variety of analytical objectives and demonstrates how to create, process, and analyse a text corpus through a series of hands-on applications. Continue reading

Collecting and Analyzing Twitter Data Using R

2019-07-15 15 min read tutorials [Denis Cohen Simon Kühne]

How do you access Twitter’s API, collect a stream of tweets, and analyze the retrieved data? Which potentials, challenges, and limitations for social scientific research come along with using Twitter data? This Methods Bites Tutorial by Denis Cohen, based on a workshop by Simon Kühne (Bielefeld University) in the MZES Social Science Data Lab in Spring 2019, aims to tackle these questions. Continue reading