HISTORY 493 Quantitative Historical Analysis
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HISTORY 493 Quantitative Historical Analysis
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Carole Shammas, shammas@.usc.edu, 213-740-1671 Spring 2007 Wed. 2-4:50 pm. classroom THH 113 Office (SOS 265) hours 11-noon Wednesday, 3-4 pm Thursday & by appt Course website: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~shammas/hist493/index.htm BOOKSChas. H. Feinstein and Mark Thomas, Making History Count: Primer in Quantitative Methods for Historians Marija J. Norusis, SPSS 12.0 Statistical Procedures Companion recommended: Alan Agresti and Barbara Finlay, Statistical Methods for the
Social Sciences ARTICLES – distributed in class or available
on-line
Patricia Kelly Hall and Steven Ruggles, “'Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity': New Evidence on the Internal Migration of Americans, 1850-2000," Journal of American History (hereafter JAH) 91 no.3 (December, 2004), http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/91.3/hall.html Mary Ryan, Cradle of the Middle-Class pp. 60-65 Michael A. Bellesiles, “Origins of Gun Culture in America 1760-1865,” JAH 83 (1996), 425-455 JSTOR Critiques of Bellesiles – Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb 1 2002 on LEXIS-NEXIS or http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i21/21a01201.htm; and William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 59 (January 2002) at www.historycoop.org Robt. Churchill, Reviews in American History Sept. 2001, PROJECT MUSE Claudia Goldin, “America’s Graduation from High School: The Evolution and Spread of Secondary schooling in the Twentieth Century,” JEH 58 (1998), 345-374 and errata Table 3 p. 1118 in December issue of v. 58. JSTOR Carole Shammas, Preindustrial Consumer in England and America pp. 100-118. Frances Gouda and Peter H. Smith, “Famine, Crime, and Gender in 19th C. France: Explorations in Time-series Analysis,” Historical Methods (hereafter HM)16 no. 2 (1983), 59-73 Larry W. Isaac and Larry J. Griffin, “Ahistoricism in Time-Series Analyses of Historical Process: Critique, Redirection, and Illustrations from U.S. Labor History,” American Sociological Review 54 (1989), 873-890. JSTOR Richard H. Steckel, "The Age at Leaving Home in the United States, 1850-1860," Social Science History 20 no.4 (1996), JSTOR Catherine A. Fitch and Steven Ruggles, "Building the National Historical Geographic Information System," HM 36 no. 1 (winter 2003), 41-51. WILSON Ian N. Gregory and Paul S. Ell, "Analyzing Spatiotemporal Change by Use of National Historical Geographical Information Systems," HM 38 no.4 (fall 2005), 149-158. WILSON Philip J. Ethington, "L.A. and the Problem of Urban HIstorical Knowledge," online version of AHR only, 105 no.5 (fall 2000) www.historycoop.org Andrew Abbott, “”Reflections on the Future of Sociology,” Contemporary Sociology 29 (2000), 296-300 PROQUEST Daniel Scott Smith, “A Mean and Random Past: The
Implications of Variance for History,” HM
17 (1984), 141-147 Daniel Scott Smith, "Context, Time, History," in Peter Karsten and John Modell, Theory, Method, and Practice in Social and Cultural History (New York, 1992) 13-32. Richard H. Steckel, "Big Social Science History" Social Science History 31 (2007), 1-34. PROJECT MUSE For Reference: Matthew Sobek and Steven Ruggles, “The IPUMS Project: An Update,” HM 32 (1999), 102-110 PROQUEST Patricia Kelly Hall et al. “IPUMS metadata: Documenting 150 years of Census Microdata,” HM 32 (1999), 111-118.PROQUEST Steven Ruggles, "New Projects of the Minnesota Population Center," HM 36 (2003), 5-8.WILSON MATERIALSYou should purchase USB mobile drive with at least 256 megabytes. SPSS, the software package we will be using, is in the History Lab and in all the campus computer labs. You can also purchase a copy for PC or Mac from ITS (McClintock and Jefferson Bldg) for $160, which is the student rate, enabling you to do your analyses on your own computer. PURPOSE OF THE COURSE
The purpose of this course is to enable you to read quantitative research in history and the social sciences and use quantitative methods in your own research. Consequently, we will concentrate at the beginning of the semester on statistical methods appropriate for historical data, the use of a statistical computer package, SPSS, and readings that show how historians and social scientists have used these methods in research. There will be a dataset made available to you for analysis. It will be one of the historical public use samples from the decennial U.S. census available from the IPUMS University of Minnesota project. After spring break, you will work on your own research project which can be based on IPUMS data, other pre-existing datasets from archives such as ICPSR or one you put together yourself. In this later part of the semester, we will also discuss research design and research questions in specific subject fields of history and critiques of standard social science and historical research design. All projects will be presented in class during the last week. ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADINGThis course is hands-on. To receive credit I will expect
you to attend every class, bring your books
and USB drive with you, discuss the reading and assignments (20%); complete a group of
written assignments analyzing historical data on the computer
using SPSS and present results in class (40% of grade), and do a final project (40% of
grade). For undergraduates the project will be in the form of a Powerpoint presentation.
Graduate students will give a Powerpoint presentation in class but also turn in a paper of
approximately 10 pages that elaborates on the findings. Tables will be the evidential core
of both Powerpoint and paper. Reading assignments are due on the date listed on the
schedule. SPSS and any other software we may be using are available most conveniently in
the History Lab and in the Waite Phillips
Lab. (basement of Waite Phillips Hall) Jan 10 The statistical analysis of historical data Data matrix, univariate descriptive analysis 1850 census dataset and SPSS Jan 17 Assignment due: frequency printout and discussion of variables, cleaning recoding Normal distribution
Reading: Feinstein and Thomas (hereafter F&T) chs.1 pp. 1-22, ch. 2 pp. 33-51,
53-65; Norusis ch.1-2;
Jan 24 Inferential Statistics -- pop., sample, point and interval estimation Assignment due: univariate analysis exercise Reading: F & T ch 5 pp.117-140; Norusis ch. 5,6; examples of tables in articles Gun culture controversy and replication of results Grad. Reading:Bellesiles, “Origins of Gun Culture” and critiques Jan 31 Hypothesis Testing, stat. significance, bivariate analysis of categorical data: crosstabs, Chi sq. Reading: F&T ch. 6 149-172 and ch. 7.3; Norusis ch.7, 10 Ryan Cradle pp.60-65 Feb 7 Assignment due: Crosstabs, Chi Square Bivariate analysis of categorical and interval data – Analysis of variance
Reading : Norusis ch. 9 Feb 14 Assignment due: analysis of variance Bivariate regression and correlation Reading: F&T ch. 3.1, 3.2, ch. 4, ch.6 pp.173-179; Norusis ch. 12 Feb 21 Bivariate regression assignment due Multiple regression and dummy variables Quantitative history project Reading: F&T ch 8, ch. 9 ch. 10.1; Norusis ch. 13; Goldin Feb 28 Discussion of multiple regression results Transformations to meet constraints of regression model Reading: F&T ch. 11, ch. 12 except 12.4; Shammas Mar 7 Assignment due: multiple regression Aggregate versus individual level designs Finding articles in social science history Mar 14 SPRING BREAK Mar 21 Assignment due: Analysis of article on research topic Time and change processes -- time series analysis Creating your own dataset and entering it on SPSS Reading: P. Smith and Gouda Mar 28 Time series continued Group discussion of individual projects Reading: F&T ch.10.2, ch. 11.33, ch. 12 pp. 351-55, ch. 14.1, A3 Apr 4 Assignment due: time series Logistic Regression Reading: Steckel "Leaving Home" and F&T ch 13.1-.3, ch.15.2 and app. A.4; Norusis ch.15 Grad. Reading: Isaac and Griffin Apr 11 Assignment due: logistic regression Spatial Analysis: GIS Reading: Fitch and Ruggles, Ethington Grad. Reading: Gregory and Ell April 18 Big Social Science History Critiques of standard data matrix and multivariate analysis Research design and list of articles/books on project Reading: Steckel, "Big Social Sci. History" D.S. Smith, "Context, Time, History," Moretti, Literary Hist. Grad reading: D.S. Smith, "Mean and Random" Apr 25 Presentation of projects May 7 Revision of projects due
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