Software Tools

by Sharon Green. Although some people consider randomized experiments the gold standard, in many cases, it would be highly unethical to assign individuals to harmful exposures to measure their effects. Modern causal inference techniques help scientists to estimate treatment effects using observational data. In particular, propensity score matching helps scientists estimate causal effects using observational data by matching individuals so that the “treatment” and “control” groups are balanced on measured covariates. After implementing propensity score matching, data visualizations make it easier to assess the quality of the matches before estimating effects. This blog post is a tutorial for implementing propensity score matching and creating data visualizations to assess covariate balance–that is, visually assessing whether the matched individuals are balanced with respect to measured covariates.

by Hilary Faxon, Ph.D. & Win Moe. Non-Roman scripts pose particular challenges for text mining. Here, we reflect on a project that used text mining alongside qualitative coding to understand the politicization of online content following Myanmar’s 2021 military coup.

by Leïla Njee Bugha. Among its many uses, remote sensing can prove especially useful to document changes and trends from eras or settings, where traditional sources are either inexistent or infrequently collected. This is the case when one wants to study urban expansion in sub-Saharan countries over the past 20 years. To further remedy the lack of data on land cover uses from earlier time periods, classification methods can be used as well. Using easily accessible satellite imagery from Google Earth Engine, I provide here an example combining remote sensing with classification to detect changes in the land cover in Nigeria since 2000 due to urban expansion.