Cultural Measurement and Analysis in Policy Research
This course provides a foundation for analyzing culture as socially transmitted information that influences decision-making, social behavior, and policy effectiveness. Students examine theoretical perspectives from cognitive and evolutionary anthropology and apply mixed qualitative–quantitative approaches to operationalize cultural variables for empirical testing.
Methods include principal component and cluster analysis, network modeling, autoregressive techniques, and supervised machine learning. By the end of the course, students evaluate how cultural measurement informs policy analysis in areas such as public health, international development, and countering violent extremism.
