Gregory Bovitz

How to critically think about public opinion surveys and experiments. I gained an appreciation for the complexity of the survey process.

Highly recommend for anyone interested in public opinion. Professor Bovitz is excellent and the course material is fascinating. This course doesn't really focus on statistical methods, but more on the types of surveys, types of experiments, and experimental design. This course is especially beneficial for people interested in online panels - we spend a long time talking about these, and Professor Bovitz runs his own online panel.

How to measure Public Opinion properly, how to evaluate the surveys and polls presented in the medias, knowing the biais, the risk, the potential errors... This course also sheds light on the usefulness (especially in politics) of measuring what people think.

Well-organized course, the professor is very present for all the students, the readings are interesting (sometimes a lot), the works is well distributed throughout the weeks, we get to chose the topic of our final paper which enables us to work on a personal/interesting subject!

History of surveys, methodology, quant and qualitative methods

I learnt a lot about experimentation method’s actually

I learned in depth about public opinion research. We learned about methodology, specifically different types of surveys and data. We learned how to evalute public opinion articles and sources and critique the methodology. While other courses focus on producing data/ original research, this course focuses on research design and the steps that need to happen in order to produce sound research.

I didn’t enjoy it that much so I would not recommend 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Spring 2023 Course: POLSUN3921_008_2023_1-AMERICANPOLITICSSEMINAR : POLSUN3921_008_2023_1 - AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR Instructor: Gregory Bovitz