BMET 23A27 - Quantitative Methods for Security Studies

This workshop provides an advanced introduction to quantitative methods in the field of Security Studies. It is designed to equip students with both the theoretical foundations and practical tools necessary to engage critically and effectively with data-driven research in international security. Over the course of twelve sessions (24 hours in total), participants will learn how to identify, collect, structure, analyse, and interpret quantitative data related to armed conflicts, political violence, non-state actors, and institutional responses. The workshop is structured in four parts. The first part provides a conceptual and methodological toolbox, introducing students to key datasets, statistical techniques, and the fundamentals of research design. The second part consists of empirical case studies on topics such as interstate disputes, armed groups, and micro-level patterns of violence, helping students understand how different types of data can be used to investigate specific security phenomena. The third part focuses on text-as-data approaches, covering techniques such as text classification, framing analysis, topic modeling, and semantic scaling, with applications to policy documents, institutional discourse, and strategic narratives. The final part of the workshop is an interactive lab in which students work in small groups to design and present original research projects. Each group is assigned a prompt and relevant datasets, and must define a research question, select appropriate methods, identify potential challenges, and outline a strategy for empirical analysis. This practical segment allows students to consolidate the skills acquired during the workshop and receive feedback from both the instructor and their peers. Throughout the workshop, students will work with a wide range of data sources—spanning from classical datasets such as the Correlates of War and Polity IV to more recent georeferenced datasets, web-scraped data, and large corpora of institutional texts. Special attention will be given to the trade-offs inherent in quantitative analysis, particularly when dealing with sensitive or incomplete data in high-stakes policy contexts. The workshop also explores how data-driven approaches shape our understanding of contemporary conflicts, drawing extensively on the findings and methodologies of the DATAWAR project at Sciences Po-CERI. By the end of the course, students will have developed technical skills in quantitative analysis and will be encouraged to critically reflect on the political and epistemological implications of using data in security research. The final sessions will be dedicated to a group-based research design lab, where students will apply the concepts learned to develop and present original research proposals.

Mattia SGUAZZINI

Séminaire

English

No prior programming experience is required for this course. However, it is recommended that you bring a laptop to class with some basic tools already installed, as they will be useful for hands-on activities. In particular, having R (version 3 or later) and RStudio installed locally is encouraged. In addition, it is important to ensure that access to a Google account is available, as Google Colab will be used for certain exercises. Institutional university accounts typically include access to Colab, but it should be verified that the account is active and that Google Colab can be opened and used without issues.

Autumn 2025-2026

1°) Class participation: 10% Students are expected to actively participate in class discussions, contribute to collective reflections on readings, and engage in Q&A sessions following lectures and presentations. 2°) Contribution to group work: 30% During the final sessions, students will work in small groups to develop a research design in response to a given prompt. This includes defining the research question, formulating hypotheses, selecting appropriate data and methods, and identifying potential limitations. Each group will present their work to the class. Assessment will focus on the quality of collaboration, clarity of presentation, and ability to respond to feedback. 3°) Individual research design paper: 60%. Students will submit a short written research design based on the tools and concepts discussed in class. The paper should include a research question, research design and hypothesis, methodology, data sources, and a brief discussion of limitations.