Training in Computational Social Science Methods
for Qualitative China Research



Dear Survey Participant,

China in Europe Network (CHERN) together with the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies (NIAS) will arrange training in the use of computational social science methods in qualitative China research, in order to make the methods better known among European China scholars.

This initiative responds to two recent developments. Firstly, the exponential expansion in the amount of accessible digital materials, and secondly, the increasing difficulties to travel and conduct field research in China due to various reasons such as the pandemic. Furthermore, the use of big data and computational research methods are highly interesting as they enable researchers to utilize new datasets and ask novel research questions.

The aim is to organize two types of events:

1) Online webinar(s) in late October 2021 to provide basic introductions about the opportunities that computational research methods provide for the study of contemporary China

2) Training workshop (2 or 3 days) in early March 2022 at NIAS at the University of Copenhagen.
The contents of the training workshop will be planned so that the participants do not need to have any previous knowledge of programming languages (such as Python or R). However, it would be good if they knew something about coding.

Now we would like to know what kind of training do you regard as useful.
Online webinars

1. What types of topics would you regard as useful, and how would you prioritize them? Please select the topics that you are interested in and put them in the order of preference (1=highest preference)

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What is essential to know when planning a computational project?
- ethical considerations
- what can and cannot be done with computational methods

Examples of studies that have been conducted with computational methods
- researchers introduce pieces of studies (for example their research articles): what method used, why, the different stages of the research process, related ethical issues

Basic introduction about available Chinese digital materials, how to collect them, what tools are available for analysis?
- Databases
- Web-crawling
- Application Programming Interfaces APIs (for Weibo, WeChat, Twitter, FB, ..)
- Platforms such as DocuSky https://docusky.org.tw/DocuSky/home/
Something else
Please use this text box to provide additional suggestions
Training workshop

2. What type of training would you regard as useful, and how would you prioritize the options? Please select the types of training that you are interested in and put them in the order of preference (1=highest preference)

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Step-by-step training in groups on a project: from the collection of data to the analysis

Training in analytical skills, for example social network analysis, sentiment analysis, semantic analysis, topic modelling, visualization
Practical exercises with DocuSky using own datasets
Something else
Please use this text box to provide additional suggestions

3. Preferred length of the training workshop

Other comments or suggestions

4. Do you have any additional ideas, suggestions or comments? Please use this text field to send them.

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Information about the survey participants

5. What is your level of familiarity with computational methods

Thank you for your participation!