Category Archives: Praxes

After years of studying and applying quantitative social science research methods, it has become easier to catch glimpses of larger connections between seemingly independent methodological approaches. I have learned, for example, that survey development has a lot in common with … Continue reading →

Choosing a functional form for the relationship between the assignment and outcome variable from a regression discontinuity design is an important step in estimating the local average treatment effect. Plotting nonparametric smoothers can suggest a functional form, and nonparametric inference … Continue reading →

A reader who is studying political science at the University of Chicago asked me how I plotted the regression discontinuity simulations in my previous blog entry. Here’s a reproducible example for those of you conducting regression discontinuity analyses with : … Continue reading →

I recently presented a paper on spatial regression discontinuity at the annual conference of the American Evaluation Association in Orlando. I wanted to graphically illustrate regression discontinuity and its spatial analogue, so I simulated some examples in . Plots such … Continue reading →

Back in March I led a workshop on geographic mapping and spatial analysis with R. I finally got around to running my notes and syntax through Sweave to create a single document. Click on the image below to access the … Continue reading →