Researcher, University of Hamburg (Germany)

Dr. Ingo Fiedler is an economist and his main expertise lies in the area of the regulation of gambling with a special focus on online gambling. He is currently writing a book on gambling from a health economic perspective.

In his academic career, Dr. Fiedler obtained diplomas both in business administration and economics from the University of Hamburg. His Ph.D. thesis “Empirical Analyses on Online Poker” was awarded a prize for the best dissertation at the faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Hamburg. Dr. Fiedler holds a position at University of Hamburg, Division on gambling, and is working in close collaboration with the research Chair on Gambling at Concordia University, Montréal. Besides serving the scientific community on gambling by publishing and reviewing articles, Dr. Fiedler adds to the public knowledge on gambling by commenting in various media outlets. His expertise was also sought by the European Parliament, the Financial Committee of the German Bundestag, Germany’s Ministry of Finance, Québec’s Ministry of Finance, and other institutions.

Abstract
Quantitative analyses can be conducted with data gathered by surveys, experiments or observations. This workshop covers the whole process for observational data from first ideas to obtaining and interpreting results. This includes the following steps (a) generating ideas, topics, and hypotheses, (b) ways to collect and store data in the digital age, (c) operationalizing variables, (d) analyzing large sets of data, and (e) interpretation.

Participants will obtain “how to knowledge” by following through an example of an actual example of online poker data. During the workshop, participants will learn to extract and analyze observational data in this environment. An important role will be the discussion on the various options of a researcher during each step in the data collecting and analyzing process, with the goal to find promising paths of analysis and avoid dead ends.

During the workshop statistical software like SPSS, STATA, and SQL will be used. However, participants are not required to have any knowledge of these. The workshop will not be an introduction to these software tools. Rather, software is used to illustrate examples and lead through thought processes.