Introducing the Potential Outcomes Framework

Join us for a one-hour seminar with Dr Charles Lanfear as he introduces the Potential Outcomes Framework, a foundational approach to causal inference in the social sciences and beyond. This seminar will provide a clear, accessible overview of key concepts, including counterfactual reasoning, treatment effects, and the assumptions necessary for causal identification. Designed for researchers and students new to causal inference, this session will emphasise intuition and practical applications. Attendees will gain a better understanding of how to frame causal questions and assess causal claims using this powerful framework.

Contributors

• Dr Charles Lanfear is an Assistant Professor in the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology. He researches how crime, victimization, and social control are related to large-scale changes in communities and society as a whole using methods from demography, computational social science, and causal inference. Charles is also the convenor of research methods training and Director of the MPhil in Criminology at the Institute of Criminology.
• Professor Jose Pina-Sánchez is Professor in Quantitative Criminology at the University of Leeds and Director of Advanced Quantitative Methods for the White Rose DTP.