Internship at the Quality of Government Data Section

Internship at the Quality of Government Data Section

The Quality of Government (QoG) Data Section offers an internship for master’s students who want hands-on experience with data management in Stata and the opportunity to learn R and Python while working on topics related to quality of government.

About the internship

As an intern, you will take on two key roles:

1. Contributor: You will support our work by performing data wrangling tasks in Python and gaining insight into how the QoG data operations function.
2. Learner: You will develop skills in R, particularly in summarizing and presenting data in effective and accessible ways.

You will work closely with our data team while also being part of the broader QoG network and the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. In addition, you will have the opportunity to participate in seminars and other events organized at the department.

This internship is especially relevant for students interested in the intersection of data science and political science.

Main tasks

• Data wrangling using Python
• Preparing summaries and short analyses for publication on our social media channels
• Creating reports in R using R Markdown
• (Optional, for 20-week internships or with prior R proficiency) Developing Shiny dashboards

Who we are looking for

We welcome applications from students who are:

• Currently enrolled in a master’s program
• Highly motivated and self-driven
• Interested in Quality of Government as a research field
• Familiar with Python (basic knowledge required)
• Willing to learn R (no prior knowledge required)

The working language is English. The internship is unpaid, but students will receive academic credits.

Internship testimonies

Ilya Lavrov

Intern at QoG Data, Spring 2022

My name is Ilya Lavrov, I am a Master’s student of the Erasmus Mundus TISE programme and I was a summer intern at the Quality of Government Institute. I have a background in Political Science and I have always been interested in how political institutions of high quality are designed and what factors impact government effectiveness. Besides, I am keen on an academic career and would like to pursue a Ph.D. in Political Science, so this internship was a prime opportunity for me to take a look at how research institutes operate on the inside and gain practical experience in such an organisation.

During the internship, I was a member of the Data team. I have worked on modifying and improving the QoG Compilation Datasets. I have also updated the QoG data finder by adding more variables to it, proofreading, and adjusting variable definitions. Furthermore, I have helped several QoG professors with data collection. Overall, I had a great experience working with massive QoG datasets and I am glad that I was able to contribute to the QoG Data.

A large part of my internship was also educational. My mentor Natalia Alvarado Pachon taught me how to produce insightful and appealing visualisations in R and then I applied the acquired skills to make a series of tweets about E-governance around the world which was published on the QoG Twitter. Not only did I work with the dataset and create the plots and maps but I also created a content plan, conducted a literature review on the topic, and analysed various case studies. Overall, it was a valuable experience for me, during which I learned how to pitch my ideas and attract the readers’ attention with a limited amount of words, allowed by the platform.

All in all, I had a very positive experience during the internship. I expanded my knowledge on the impact of the quality of government on various policy areas. Moreover, I improved my quantitative research skills, related to managing, processing, analysing, and visualising data. The atmosphere in the team was always very supportive and I could freely choose which tasks to complete, based on my research interests. I am grateful to the entire QoG team and would love to collaborate with many of them in the future!