a quantoid nerdzo rant

dear friends,

i am not sure when it happened, but at a certain point i became a quantoid nerdzo. now, i am not a very talented or adept one, but i am a q-n nonetheless. i offer up the following as proof:

* i am currently enrolled in soci 506: quantiative methods three, introduction to event history analysis. this is not a mandatory course.
* i previously took soci 504: quantiative methods one, advanced applied regression analysis
* next semester i will be taking two stats courses
* i have both spss and stata on my computer. i use them both atleast once a week. i have a clear preference between the two [spss for data management, stata for data manipulation]
* i work on a quantitative project for dietlind stolle. i have cleaned data, merged variables, and created a codebook.
* i have written a paper that uses the social capital community benchmark survey and pimp it out at academic conferences
* i have chosen to do a quantiative analysis for my electoral behaviour class, even though there is a literature-review option
* i regularly attend a social statistics speakers series.
* this summer i had an office at the social statistics graduate cluster. my friends called it the nerd farm. hell, i called it the nerd farm. the nerdery on occassion.

so, there we have it. i am a quantoid nerdzo. and today after i had written a book review, it was time to put together a proposal for my electoral behaviour class. this lead to a 6 hour search of religion and politics data. let me summarize for you the problems encountered thus far:

the world values survey - i have special memories of the wvs. it was the first data i ever worked with in 385 at queen's. there are lots of questions on religion and on politics. but the fuckers forgot to ask people if they voted.

project canada- longitudinal data, would be good for event-history analysis, lots of religion questions. controlled by reginald bibby. canada's foremost sociologist of religion who works at the university of lethbridge. this is why sociology of religion in canada is fucked. when they finally give me my phd i am going to go scarface on the entire subdiscipline. also, the data is managed/controlled by his son reggie jr.

god and society in north america- study done by one of my old profs at queen's. super but dated and not longitudinal.

the comparative study of electoral systems- brings together the election studies of fifty countries. rad. had me super excited. then i found out the religion variables were sparce and the codebook is not unified.

the general social survey- this is my best hope. there are 1000 variables. the survey has been done every two years for the last twenty. it is the mother of all data sources. but the codebook is in notepad. motherfuckin notepad. do you know how many lines of lucida console that is. a lot. a super lot. like you can design and implement a survey, manipulate it in sophisticated software packages and have never heard of microsoft word or wordperfect.

so, memo to old quantoid nerdzos- liberate your data, cut and paste your codebook into word or hire a research-assistant/graduate student/youngster to do it for you.

and, memo to young quantoid nerdzos- i'll see you on wed. for the next speaker.

nee-ner-nee-ner-nee-ner, dance off.
cam