Lokniti-CSDS in collaboration with Jain University, Bengaluru, organised the Summer Workshop on ‘Analyzing Quantitative Data on Indian Politics’ from 10th July 2017 to 22nd July 2017 at the global campus of Jain University in Bengaluru.

The twenty-two participants who attended this year’s workshop were selected from a pool of about hundred applicants. The participants belonged to some of the premier research institutions and leading universities of the country namely Delhi School of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University, University of Hyderabad, Punjab University (Chandigarh), and Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai), Gauhati University (Assam), North Eastern Hill University (Shillong).

The selected participants were given a set of readings before they came to attend the workshop. The participants had to attend lectures and practical data analysis sessions. The two week, residential workshop aimed at training young social science researchers in quantitative methods, focusing not merely on statistical techniques but also on formulating interesting research questions. Data from the 2014 National Election Study (NES) Pre-poll was used as the basis for the study.

The resource persons for the workshop included Pradeep Chhibber (University of California, Berkeley), Irfan Nooruddin (Georgetown University, Washington), Siddharth Swaminathan (Azim Premji University, Bengaluru), Sandeep Shastri (Jain University), Sanjay Kumar (CSDS), Suhas Palshikar (Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune), Kailash K.K (University of Hyderabad), Rajeshwari Deshpande (Savitribai Phule Pune University) Reetika Syal (Jain University, Bengaluru), Jyoti Mishra (Lokniti, CSDS) and Deepti Swamy (Jain University, Bengaluru).

Every participant made a presentation at the end of the workshop, by choosing an appropriate research question and using quantitative techniques to answer it. Lokniti plans to hold an Advance Workshop for those participants who would submit a research paper in a limited time frame after attending the workshop.