This course offers a brief introduction to agent-based modeling (ABM), a technique that allows researchers to understand and represent interactions and complexity in nearly every field imaginable. ABM can augment traditional statistical approaches and explore questions that are difficult to test empirically. This course will walk participants through the background that novice modelers need in order to begin to translate their research goals into agent-based simulation models. Participants will learn about how ABM – and other simulation approaches – may or may not be useful for understanding a variety of problems and questions.  We will go through a step-by step, hands-on approach to conceptualizing, creating, implementing, and analyzing simulation models.