Investigating change across time: the challenges of cross-study comparative research and possible solutions

Speaker(s):

David Bann, UCL

Abstract:

Across the health and social sciences, addressing many key scientific or policy questions requires an understanding of whether a given quantity has changed over time—e.g., by year of data collection or by birth year. For example, has socioeconomic inequity in health narrowed? Has social mobility improved or worsened?

 

Comparative research initiatives are increasingly prominent components of health and social sciences, yet they are notoriously challenging to conduct. Seemingly innocuous analytical decisions can alter the conclusions drawn yet existing methodological training focuses on analysing single datasets.

 

This interactive workshop will:

1) Discuss the opportunities and key challenges of comparative research, as well as possible solutions.

2) Introduce a new open-access teaching resource that offers detailed instruction and reusable analytical syntax to guide newcomers on comparative analysis and data visualisation (in both R and Stata formats).

3) Facilitate a broader discussion of methodological issues and next steps in comparative research.