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Course's final assignment and examination

Dear Everyone,

Here is what we will do for the course's final assignment and examination.

The examination will have 2 parts:

  1. A 10 minute presentation plus 5-10 minute discussion during the last session of our course.
  2. An essay with replication repository (with code, data, and materials) to prepare and upload up to 6 weeks after the final session of the course.

In the two sessions preceding the last, which will take place on "Thu., 15/01/2026, 09:00 - 11:00", I will share a list of topics with you. I will ask you to select one of these topics (among those I discussed in previous weeks of the course) as the topic of your presentation and practical assignment and do as I describe below.

In the course's final week on "Thu., 29/01/2026, 09:00 - 11:00", all students will give a 10 minute presentation about their selected topic and plans for the final essay, e.g., what question will your essay answer? What data will you use? What are related literature about the topic? In addition to the discussion with everyone, they will receive comments from me about their plans.

For example, suppose a student selects the "Using traditional data from Census, survey to study migration" as the topic of their assignment. In that case, they will use the reading list for that week, search and find other literature, plus use the data sources and research questions that I discussed, and prepare their presentation and an example empirical analysis.

This empirical analysis should include the steps we discussed in the first week, i.e.,

  1. In a report that you write that should be about 1,000 words or a maximum 5 A4 pages long (including figures, tables, and results that I discuss below, excluding references that can go on extra pages), start with clarifying a research question, and provide an introduction on why it is important to answer this question?

  2. What are the answers that literature has given to this question? Based on the literature, you should present a tentative answer to this question. You should properly cite the literature that you read and used to formulate your question (example: see APA style guide: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/journal-article-references).

  3. A data source (examples that I introduce during the teaching can also be used) that could enable answering the question. For the example of "Using traditional data from Census, survey to study migration", you may find a publicly accessible database that suits your short empirical analysis or use those that I introduced.

  4. Your analytical strategy to take the data, analyze it, and answer the question. For instance, "The analysis plan is to run a regression model using variables M, N, O, X, from database WW to evaluate these variables' effect on the outcome variable, Y".

  5. Your analysis code should be included in a private repository and add me as a collaborator (more on this below). Please use R and/or Python for the analysis. The essay should also include the results of your analysis code as tables or figures. Bonus point if you use plain text formats to write your essay which is under version control with Git!

  6. Did your results support the tentative answer based on the literature (see point 2 above) or refute it? Discuss what you learned from this empirical investigation.

  7. What would you do next, and what would you suggest researchers reading your study's report do in the future? For example, is there a new research question that you can write about based on your study that someone else could take and answer in their future research?

The essay should be a maximum of 5 A4 pages (excluding references). It should include these sections: a) introduction, b) background and literature, c) methods and analytical strategy, d) results, e) discussion and conclusion (including possible problems and limitations of your method and results), f) references can go into extra pages beyond those 5 (cite both the literature that you used, the data source that you collected or used etc.).

One hint on "where to find a good research question?" I recommend checking the "discussion" sections of the literature and articles I introduced in reading materials. They usually include what I wrote above, i.e., "future direction of research", you can select your question from those!

Please feel free to ask in our following sessions if the description above is unclear, thanks.

Best wishes,

Ali

How to hand over your essay and materials?

Create a "private" GitHub repository on your own profile where you commit and push all these materials.

Once you are finished, that should be by the handover deadline of 6 weeks after the course's final session, i.e., until March 12th, 2026, at midnight CET (at the latest), add me as a collaborator to your "private GitHub repository" and send me a brief email that you have finished and uploaded your materials.

This way, I can download (clone) your repository and access all the materials. Additionally, you show that you have learned how to create a repository and commit and push your materials to it.

Files to upload as your final essay

Please create a "private" GitHub repository as described above that includes at least these files:

  • Your codes and scripts
  • The data you used or links to download them, in case they were licensed
  • Your final essay as PDF, and also include the plain text input file such as Latex text or Word document and similar.
  • Signed statement by the University where you clarify this work is done by you
  • Signed statement by Institute of Sociology and Demography (ISD) on use of artificial intelligence (AI, or KI in German). I have included this as a Word file, i.e., 20250521_KI-Statement_ISD.docx, and please include in the table the prompts you used and which parts of the text or materials are affected by it. While you can use AI "as an assistant", you are taking "full responsibility for the text and materials" and you have to check everything as it is considered your work and use of AI should be completely and transparently reported. I hope you will not need it and if so, use it only minimally as an assistant for some parts of the work.

List of topics for the final examination

Please select one type of data from the list of 5 topics below for your final presentation and essay. You do not need to use all of the ones listed under one topic, but I expect at lease one to be used in your empirical study and essay. For example, if you select topic 5 below, you should find and use one available dataset from these: Bibliometric data; Patents; Online CVs; Synthetic and simulated data. Consulting the reading and hands-on materials that I shared for each topic/week will help you in finding the suitable data.

  1. Traditional; Census (IPUMS-INT); Survey (SHARE, SOEP); Register; Re-purposing data
  2. Facebook; Twitter; BluSky; Other social media; Online news
  3. LinkedIn; Online search/Google Trends; Email and IP; Wikipedia data; Air travel data
  4. Geo-spatial data; Mobile phone; Sensors/wearables; Satellite data
  5. Bibliometric data; Patents; Online CVs; Synthetic and simulated data