METHODS READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS

ASSIGNMENT 5 WEB-BASED DATABASES

OVERVIEW

THAT GRADING THING
REVIEW HOW GRADES ARE CALCULATED HERE: 

This assignment is due Wednesday, December 13 BY NOON.

HARD COPY please! Place in my EPLS mailbox (3210 Stone) thanks!

This entire assignment can be completed in approximately 3 pages.
 

For this assignment, you are to locate an online database (i.e., on the Internet). THE DATABASE YOU CHOOSE MUST BE ON THE INTERNET.
PLEASE NOTE: SELECT ONLY ONE SINGLE DATABASE (not an entire archive, such as ICPSR's SAMHDA--Substance abuse and Mental Health data archive--or the entire Roper Center).
Examples could be the cumulative General Social Survey File (that one is enormous--I don't recommend that one!) or the cumulative 1979-2006 National Science Foundation Surveys of Public Understanding of Science and Technology (big but on only a few primary topics.)

The database may either be:

• (1) Files of data that can be accessed OR

• (2) Sets of tables with accompanying text (see the Appendix tables in Science and Engineering Indicators 2016   for an example) that could be used to construct a new datafile.

• For example, check links on the database site, or on the sponsoring agency's site, to see whether a tutorial is available on how to use data, and how to use the tutorial if so. (The tutorial may be called other things such as a "User's Manual".)

• See what kinds of analyses could be done with the data (e.g., frequency distributions or two-way crosstabulations; comparing one institution with another). The site should give you this kind of information if it can be done. Does the site have a data analysis package (such as the SDA/DAS system or some other simple analytic system) built into it so that users can analyze data online?

• See whether the site tells if data or tables can be downloaded into EXCEL, SAS, SPSS, or some other type of spreadsheet file.

• Learn whether data may be obtained through more conventional sources (e.g., on CD-Rom for the General Social Survey through the Roper Center).

• Check alternative sources (e.g., The Digest of Educational Statistics, the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, the General Social Survey Codebook) to see whether variables have been defined or coded consistently over time.

If you can't find out any of this information, you definitely want to note these omissions in your assignment!

If the dataset is international, which languages is the information available in?

Find out as much as you can because you are going to tell the novice researcher (that's me, in this case) what you know about these data!

Consider exploring some of the sites on the course Online Database page for practice to see some of the kinds of information available about these online archives.
 

 Now that you have located an online database and explored it, here's what you provide for me:

1. The name of the archive or database

2. The url or "web address" home page of the archive

3. An overall description of the archive including:

• The unit of analysis (an individual, as in the SESTAT data? an organization, as in the Web CASPAR data? A time point in a country or state? Tables covering time points, variables or countries?)

• The overall types of variables in the archive (give a few examples)

• The time frame covered by the archive (average school FCAT scores for 1998-2015? The General Social Survey from 1972-2016?)

• The geographic frame covered by the archive (state? local? United States? international?)

• The sponsor(s)  of the archive if known or mentioned (e.g., NSF? NCES? The State of Florida?)

• How the archive came to be (if available; some databases will give you the "history")

• The sources of the data (collected especially for the archive, such as IPEDS? compiled from other sources such as Web CASPAR?)

4. Any available sites/pages that describe the database (AND, it is perfectly OK to cut and paste from these sites to answer any of the points in question 3). These would include questionnaires or coding instructions or instruments.

5. The presence of any kind of tutorial link or page that informs the reader how to access OR use the database (OR both).

6. How are the data available? Ready for online analysis? Available for download into your computer? In .pdf format tables? Are there alternative ways to obtain the data (such as CD-Rom or DVD?)? If so, how can the data be obtained?

7. Given your best knowledge, what kinds of problems may occur when/if a novice tries to use the data? How do you find out this one? Do some basic analyses, such as frequency distributions and try it out if you can! For example, through using the data for Statistics some years back, I discovered the famous Census "Falling through the NET" dataset was riddled with mispunches (they interviewed three year olds; sizable data were missing on race and ethnicity, for example).

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METHODS READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS

OVERVIEW

ONLINE DATABASE MENU

November 29 2017
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Susan Carol Losh