Greetings from Ann Arbor

Right now, I'm in Michigan, as part of the assessment team for ICPSR's new website Teaching With Data.  Unfortunately, it's pouring in Ann Arbor, and so I don't get to troll around one of my favorite college towns before events commence at 3:00 pm.  However, being here always reminds me of how cool data people are.  I'm ready to begin!

ICPSR's Meeting for Official Representatives - Online this week!

Today was the kickoff for ICPSR's first ever online OR meeting. Usually ICPSR hosts their meeting in Ann Arbor every other year. But the economy got the best of everyone this year, and so they decided to host it online via webinars instead. Although it's disappointing not to go to Ann Arbor, the plus of doing things this way is that more people can attend. It doesn't cost a dime to register for these webinars and learn a few things about data.

Libbie Stephenson and I hosted our New OR Orientation today, so if you are not reading this blog post before now, I hate to say that you missed it! But do check out the rest of the schedule for this week. I'm hoping to catch the session on the 2010 Census on Wednesday at 11:00!

Teaching about operationalization with dataset archives

I've noticed that students have a really hard time moving from the idea they might have for a project to identifying a dataset that they can actually use. On Wednesday I'm going to experiment with how best to guide students through this transition from idea to empirical data that actually exists.

One point I would like to make with the students is that they should be browsing datasets while they refine research question. This means they have to begin looking at codebooks early on. The easier it is for students to gain access to codebooks, the better, so I would recommend the following data archives: CPANDA and ARDA.

The picture to the right gives you a sense of what you can see if you use CPANDA's "browse study questions" option. The fact that the students can immediately access the questions, without having to register and download a pdf or Word document is a huge plus!