Levente Littvay

Current Research Agenda:

1. 1. Improve accessibility & appropriate use of mainly multilevel & structural equation models.
   2. Advance research on populist polarization, namely the measurement & mitigation of partisan motivated democracy eroding policy preferences.
   3. Understand motivations underlying secessionist attitudes.

Impact Statement:

1. 1. In the past decade I have led one of the largest political science methods education centers that, during this time, was responsible for the training of around 10,000 participants. In 2021 I (co-)founded MethodsNET to advance pluralistic social science methods. I lead the development of the MethodsNET YouTube Channel.
   2. I am committed to producing publicly available data which lead to my participation in the European Election Study (mainly 2009), Comparative Study of Election Systems (contributing Hungary 2018 & Tunisia 2019), European Social Survey Wave 10 Democracy & COVID Questionnaire Design Teams. I also extended the Global Populism Database w/ US Governors data & lead the revival of the Hungarian Twin Registry and its extension into a population based research resource.
   3. Though my efforts in Team Populism, I helped improve public understandings of populism, spawning our YouTube channel, the Leader Profile Series (with online training program) and The Guardian’s 84 article New Populism series. Based on my research, I proposed and designed the most visited piece in the series: “How Populist Are You?” (with over 1.5 million views).

Workshops: (1) Social Science Research Design, (2) AI/LLM Life Skills for Academics, (3) Survey Research Methods, (4) Measurement in the Social Sciences, (5) Logic of Causal Inference (Intro to Impact Evaluation), (6) Intro to Experimental Social Science, (7) Intro to Stats, (8) Data Theory & Literacy, (9) Data Visualization Basics, (10) R, (11) Introduction to Regression (OLS, Assumptions, Logistic), (12) Regression 2 (GLM, Weights, Clusters / Voting Behavior Methods), (13) Advanced Topics in Regressions, (14) Multilevel Modeling, (15) Structural Equation Modeling, (16) Advanced Topics in Structural Equation Modeling, (17) Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling, (18) Latent Variable Models, (19) Mplus, (20) Missing Data. Retired Workshops: (21) Ecological Inference, (22) Introduction to Categorical Data Analysis, (23) Multivariate Statistics. In preparation: (24) Introduction to Quantitative Text Analysis. (25) Introduction to Machine Learning.

I always struggled with math, so I had to develop understandings and intuitions that ran parallel to the painstakingly acquired mathematical understandings of quantitative methods. This made me an effective educator of advanced topics to non-mathematical social science or policy audiences. In my teaching, I focus on theory, design, and effective communication and emphasize understanding both math and software applications while rejecting point-and-click or code, copy-and-paste solutions.

Design effective studies and apply the appropriate methodologies to real life problems in the world of policy, science and beyond. Produce studies that allow for causal inference to maximize effective resources use.

Tools used include randomized experiments, counterfactual program evaluation and other applications of quasi-experimental designs for causal inference, survey design and analysis, nonresponse correction, structural equation and multilevel models, and general foundations in the philosophy of science.