Session 6 – The individual level

The course works at the country-year level throughout, and this session turns to the individual level. The module fits the published specification at the level at which the original author (OA) fitted it, on a synthetic person-level dataset validated coefficient by coefficient against the real respondents, and puts the real values beside the synthetic ones.

Work through	What you do	Timing
The individual level	Sections 1 to 4: why the level of analysis matters, how the synthetic dataset was validated, OA’s published model fitted at the level at which it was estimated, and why a large individual effect can explain almost none of an aggregate association.	90 minutes
The individual level	Sections 5 to 7: where the two designs disagree on the same claim, what declaring a level does to the evidence, and what a synthetic dataset should not be asked to do.	60 minutes
Building the analysis file	For a group that downloaded the sixteen Eurobarometer files in the setup week: run the first workspace script, read its report, and work through the second, which rebuilds the course panel from the respondents and builds the panel by education band.	60 minutes

By the end of the session you have a note comparing the two designs on one claim, and a short paragraph on the questions that the synthetic data cannot be used to answer.