Finding reliable data

Here is a great post from Karen Sternheimer about how to find reliable data. http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2018/09/how-to-find-reliable-data.html

First, what constitutes data? If you search the word “data” you will likely get many vague generalized definitions. When researchers are talking about data, we mean findings that are the result of empirical observation based on systematic study. Simply put, data are what we get when we do research. In most cases in the social sciences, research papers should include findings from a systematic study, yours or other peoples’.

Casual observations about people would not constitute data, but if these observations were gathered in a systematic fashion—using a specific research method that could hypothetically be replicated by another researcher—then the findings would be considered data.

Data can be quantitative, in the form of numbers, or qualitative, which includes quotes, pictures, and researchers’ descriptions. Both forms of data are useful, but allow us to draw different conclusions. Typically quantitative data yields more breadth than depth, and the opposite is true for qualitative data. (See Janis Prince Inniss’s post for more discussion on the distinction.)

You might be wondering where to look for specific data sources. Maybe you have done a basic Internet search and are overwhelmed with choices and need help on where to begin. Here are some tools for finding data that is generally considered reliable:
Federal, state, and sometimes local agencies such as the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the National Center for Education Statistics are just a few of many federal agencies staffed by social scientists who collect, calculate, and analyze data. They write reports that are easily accessible online.
Research centers at universities or “think tanks” like Pew Research Center, NORC's General Social Survey (affiliated with University of Chicago), Stanford Center on Poverty and; Inequality, and Rand Corporation to name a few, also collect and analyze data and present reports, often online.
Journal articles and other peer-reviewed publications, such as books published by university presses, may analyze data collected by the sources noted above or collected by the author(s). When collected by the author, data tends to be smaller in scope than the large agencies listed above.

Some advocacy groups also compile and even collect data and present their findings online. These can be useful sources, but bear in mind that they might interpret their results in a way that promotes their cause. This doesn’t necessarily mean that their data aren’t useful, but be sure to carefully examine the data to see if the results match the tone of their interpretation of results, and definitely check out the data sources and methodologies they used to gather their data.

While no source of data can ever be perfect, it is important to consider the following when evaluating a potential source:
How did they gather their data? Can the results be generalized to the entire population or just a subset of the population?
Are you reviewing the original source or just someone discussing the research? Oftentimes research is misinterpreted—accidentally or intentionally—by third parties who might not understand its nuances or could leave out important information. Beware of news stories or even blog posts—they are typically not primary sources of data (which is why we link to primary sources on this blog).
Read and understand the limits of any study. When you discuss the results of a study, it is important to note if the researchers looked at only one group (say, college students) which might be very different from the general population.
Are their other related studies on this issue? Were the findings similar? While one study might be interesting, it is important to note if its findings are unusual compared with other previous research. This doesn’t mean that the researchers were “wrong,” just that it is important to recognize the limitations of any given study.

Too often, when I assign students to write research papers, they go no further than looking at the minimum number of studies required and miss some very useful information. Do several studies reference one specific source? If so, the source is likely influential and worth looking into. One of the best ways to find out about research on a topic is to go to the works cited on one or two books or journal articles on the subject.

Finding data can be an exciting part of the learning process. Just be sure what you have found are from a reliable source that uses sound methods of investigation.

Data from Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)

ICPSR is a unit within the Institute for Social Researchat the University of Michigan and maintains its office in Ann Arbor.

https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/

An international consortium of more than 750 academic institutions and research organizations, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community.

ICPSR maintains a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. It hosts 21 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.

ICPSR collaborates with a number of funders, including U.S. statistical agencies and foundations, to create thematic data collections and data stewardship and research projects.

Resources for Students:

Learning Support

• How to Read a Journal Article - Tips and tricks to make reading and understanding social science journal articles easier.
• A Guide to Interpreting SPSS Output - How to interpret frequency distributions, crosstabulations, comparison of means tests, correlations, and OLS regressions done in SPSS. Used in teaching undergraduate Introduction to Statistics course.
• Data Citations - Citing data is as important as citing literature used in a paper. This is a discussion of why it is important and how to properly cite data.
• Data Management Plans - Guidelines for effective data management, most useful for graduate students and faculty beginning research projects for the first time. Information given responds to the requirements of federal funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation.

Research Paper Competition

The ICPSR Research Paper Competition is an annual event open to undergraduate and graduate students and recent graduates. The competition seeks to highlight exemplary student research papers based on quantitative analysis of ICPSR data. Each of the four competition categories addresses a particular research topic and has specific eligibility requirements for entry. Awards include cash prizes and publication in the ICPSR Bulletin for first-place winners and on the ICPSR website for all winners.

Summer Undergraduate Internship Program

The ICPSR summer internship program provides undergraduate students with a unique and expansive experience that introduces all aspects of social science research and includes supported exploration of a research query from start to finish, "hands on" data management, and focused methodological training in quantitative research. The internship program is excellent preparation for advanced studies and careers in social science research.

Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research

The Summer Program provides a comprehensive, integrated program of studies, statistics, data analysis, and social science methodology. Its instructional environment stresses integration of methods of quantitative analysis within a broader context of substantive social research. The Summer Program takes place from early June to late August and most classes are held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Webinars and Tutorials

The ICPSR YouTube Channel presents Webinars and tutorials on accessing and using ICPSR resources. The Webinars cover a variety of topics, including finding what you want on the ICPSR website, analyzing ICPSR data online, creating setup files for SPSS, debugging SAS, SPSS, and Stata code, etc.

Using Resources for Instructors

While the materials in the Resources for Instructors are intended to support faculty, students wishing to sharpen their research skills or explore a variety of research topics are welcome to make use of these resources. Data-Driven Learning Guides demonstrate questions of interest to social scientists using real data and predefined analyses. Exercise Sets are sequenced activities that build toward a stated learning goal.

The Historical Construction of Whiteness and Jews in US History

Here is a historical study of race from UCLA anthropologist, Karen Brodkin, called How the Jews Became White.

When and Why did Americans start racializing Jews and other Europeans?  What did they do before that?


What social, economic and political policies racialized European immigrants and how did these policies affect them?


What is the author's claim about how Jews became white?

What are the other ways that institutional constructions both created race and racism?

Census Categories Around the World 2001

From Understandingrace.org April 28, 2017:

The following categories are the choices that various countries around the world allowed their residents to choose from in their own census.  Imagine if you lived in each of these countries.  What would your race be in each one?  See how many different ways that you would be categorized around the world by choosing what best describes you for each of the choices below.

Australia

            Are you of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin?:

            Yes, Torres Strait Islander,

           

            What is your ancestry?:

            English, 

            Irish, 

            Italian, 

            German, 

            Greek, 

            Chinese, 

            Australian, 

            Other,

Brazil - official census

            Choose your race:

            White - branca, 

            Black - preta, 

            Yellow - amarela, 

            Brown - parda, 

            Native, aboriginal - indigena, 

            Undeclared,

Brazil - popular categories used among the people

            White - branco,

            Olive - moreno,

            Light moreno - claro

            Mix of early colonial people in Caribbean and South America - pardo,

            Brown - preto 

            Black - negro

            Mulato - mixed
            Yellow - Amarello

Bulgaria

            What is your ethic group?:

            Bulgarian, 

            Turkish, 

            Gypsies, 

            Other,

Canada

            Are you an Aboriginal person, that is, North American Indian, Metis or Inuit (Eskimo)?:

                        Yes, North American Indian, 

                        Yes, Métis , 

                        Yes, Inuit (Eskimo) ,

            Are you:

                        Chinese,

                        White,

                        South Asian (e.g., East Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, etc.),

                        Black,

                        Latin American,

                        Filipino,

                        SE Asian (Cambodian, Indonesian, Laotian, Vietnamese),

                        Arab,

                        West Asian (e.g. Afghan, Iranian, etc.),

                        Japanese,

                        Korean,

                        Other,

            Are you a member of an Indian Band/First Nation?:

                        Yes, member of an Indian Band/First Nation

            Are you a Treaty Indian or a Registered Indian as defined by the Indian Act of Canada?:

                        Yes, Treaty Indian or a Registered Indian

England

            What is your ethnic group?:

            British, 

            Irish, 

            Any other white background, 

           

            White and Black Caribbean, 

            White and Black African, 

            White and Asian, 

            Any other Mixed background, 

            Indian, 

            Pakistani, 

            Bangleshi, 

            Any other Asian background, 

            Caribbean, 

            African, 

            Any other black background, 

            Chinese, 

            Any other,

Guam

            What is your ethnic origin or race?:

            Chamorro, 

            Samoan, 

            White, 

            Black, 

            Carolinian, 

            Filipino, 

            Japanese,

            Korean, 

            Palauan, 

            Tongan, 

            Other,

Mexico

            Are you Náhuati, Mayan, Zapoteco, Mixteco or of another indigenous group?:

            Yes or No.

South Africa

            How would you describe yourself in terms of population group?:

                        Black African, 

                        Coloured, 

                        Indian or Asian, 

                        White, 

                        Other,

United States

            Are you Spanish/Hispanic/Latino?:

                        Yes, Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano, 

                        Yes, Puerto Rican, 

                        Yes, Cuban, 

                        Yes, other Spanish/Hispanic/Latino,

           

            What is your race? Mark "x" one or more of the races to indicate what you consider yourself to be:

                        White,

                        Black, African Am., or Negro,

                        American Indian or Alaska Native,

                        Asian Indian,

                        Chinese,

                        Filipino,

                        Japanese,         

                        Korean,

                        Vietnamese,

                        Other Asian,

                        Native Hawaiian,

                        Guamanian or Chamorro,

                        Samoan,

                        Other Pacific Islander,

                        Some other race,

Social Class and Education

From The Upshot, Ny Times, this interactive site allows you to see what percent of students from the top 1% and bottom 60% attend each school of higher education.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the-bottom-60.html

This graph shows where students from different social classes end up after high school:

Review for Final

Here is a list of concepts to review.  Talk through them.  Explain them to someone.  Also, read through my explanation of the course narrative.  Hopefully that helps you put the concepts into perspective.

Terms for Review:

social construction of reality

sociological imagination

sociological Mindfulness

ingroups

categories/generalizing

stereotypes

sociological research

culture

norms

folkways

mores

taboos

values

socialization

nature and nurture

agents of socialization

gender

masculinity

femininity

deviance

social class

race

racism

explicit bias

implicit bias

Course Narrative

Unit 1:  Introduction to the Sociological Perspective

            The sociological perspective is viewing individuals as members of different groups and recognizing how these groups shape individuals.  There are a number of theories that help establish this perspective.  Social construction of reality is the idea that society/people create how we feel about things and how we experience the world.  Sociological imagination is the connection between history and biography, or a person is who they are because of when and where they live.  Sociological Mindfulness is taking our knowledge of sociology and applying them to our own life; it is realizing that we are impacted by society and we also play a role in society.  Another way that sociologists understand how individuals are influenced is by looking at the groups that individual’s belong to.  Each group is an ingroup for the individual and it shapes them.  These groups are categories which we make generalizations about if we use scientific methods to study the group.  If the generalizations are not accurate or are applied too broadly, they may become stereotypes.

Unit 2:  Culture

            Culture is perhaps the most pervasive group membership that shapes individuals.  It is so omnipresent that it affects all groups the individual is part of.  Because of that, culture is important to understand and to take a step back from in order to see the whole picture.  Culture shapes everything about how individuals act and even think.  The second part of this unit focuses specifically on culture in the United States and how students have been shaped by the values of our culture.

Unit 3:  Socialization

            After learning the importance of understanding culture, socialization helps students understand how the process of being shaped takes place.  The process of socialization begins even before childbirth and continues throughout one’s life.  Many taken-for-granted aspects of being human are really learned from a young age.  This is true in how we learn about our gender as well.  Females and males learn to act differently and learn that there are different expectations for them from childhood.  We explore the negative impact that our constructions of masculinity and femininity have on young men and women.  Then we examine how to change individuals drastically once they are shaped by society – that change is resocialization. 

Unit 4: Deviance and Social Class

            This unit begins with an understanding of what deviance is; that is, when someone breaks the norms of society.  In other words, deviance is when individuals go against the socialization process.  Using William Chambliss’s study called The Saints and the Roughnecks, I connect deviance to social class and perception.  Using this connection, we explore how the prison system has exploded over the last 20 years especially with those from lower income social classes.  This leads into what creates social class and how individuals are affected by it, especially how the poor are affected by their poverty.

Unit 5:  Race

            Race is, like gender, a taken-for-granted social construction that people assume is natural or biological.  However, there is no scientific way to discretely categorize humans into distinct racial groups – not through DNA or any other traits.  Race is a social construction that changes depending on where or when you live.  However, even though race does not exist biologically, it does exist as a social construction which has enormous impacts on individuals.  The impacts can be in the form of prejudice or discrimination and explicit or implicit bias.  One type of implicit bias is through institutional racism.  This is also a form of white privilege.