This course is intended as a first step for learners who seek to become producers of social science research. It is organized as an introduction to the design and execution of a research study. It introduces the key elements of a proposal for a research study, and explains the role of each. It reviews the major types of qualitative and quantitative data used in social science research, and then introduces some of the most important sources of existing data available freely or by application, worldwide and for China. The course offers an overview of basic principles in the design of surveys, including a brief introduction to sampling. Basic techniques for quantitative analysis are also introduced, along with a review of common challenges that arise in the interpretation of results. Professional and ethical issues that often arise in the conduct of research are also discussed. The course concludes with an introduction to the options for further study available to the interested student, and an overview of the key steps involved in selecting postgraduate programs and applying for admission. Learners who complete the course will be able to make an informed decision about whether to pursue advanced studies, and should be adequately prepared to write an application for postgraduate study that exhibits basic understanding of key aspects of social science research paradigms and methodologies. Explore the big questions in social science and learn how you can be a producer of social science research. Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/QuMOAlwhpvU Part 1 should be completed before taking this course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/social-science-study-chinese-society
2.3 Public data
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From the course by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Social Science Approaches to the Study of Chinese Society Part 2
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The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
4 ratings
From the lesson
Evidence
Week 2 will discuss the kind sources social scientists use for research. By the end of this week, you should be able to identify some of these major sources and perhaps pinpoint some sources that can be used in your own study.
Meet the Instructors
Cameron CampbellProfessor of Social Science
Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science
[MUSIC]
Hi, in this module, I'm going to introduce you to some of the major sources of
publicly accessible cross-sectional and longitudinal data.
We're very fortunate to live in a time when there is a great deal of data out
there that is readily accessible now to almost everybody with internet access.
Just a few decades ago, it was only possible to analyze publicly
available data by going to the computer center of a major research university,
the data even though it was already public, often had to be ordered.
First on punch cards, later as magnetic tapes, or
in the 1990s on CD ROMs that were then loaded and put onto a mainframe.
If you happened to live in a area that was hilly and had bad weather,
you might have to walk uphill, through a snowstorm to go analyze your data and
then perhaps walk up a hill again to go home when you're done.
Again all that's changed and
there's a lot of publicly accessible data, accessible to you via the Internet.
One of the most important sources of publicly accessible available data
is the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research.
So this is an institution housed at the University of Michigan which for
decades has served as a repository for
research data sets collected by social scientist.
Originally mainly in the United States but eventually from all over the world.
So it goes back to the 1950s and originally again, it made data sets
available to other researchers by punch card and other formats.
It now holds 250,000 files divided into 21 special thematics collections.
The files are searchable, the data sets all include documentation.
So generally if you're about to set off on a new analysis one of the best places
to start is by going to ICPSR taking the advantage of the search facility at
their website to see if there are already some data sets related to your interests.
The United Kingdom, the UK data archive, has a similar repository and
indeed by now there are other repositories in different places around the world.
Again, these repositories were probably the best place to start
if you're looking for data on a topic that's interesting to you.
In the United States there are also some very large public longitudinal surveys
that are accessible in one form or another, and I want to talk about them.
One of the most important and
certainly one of the longest running is the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.
This is a study that's been going on since the 1970s which started
following some families at that time and now continues to follow them.
It's already in the third generation.
So it's an important source for studying income and employment dynamics over very
long periods of time and the relationship to family dynamics in the United States.
Another related very important set of data sets is the National Longitudinal Surveys.
These are surveys that first in 1979 and then again at later points in time
began following courts in a sample as they age through the workforce.
So these are focus on employment following people as they make
employment transitions, as they start job and end jobs.
And then they also will get family dynamics and so forth.
So like the PSID an important resource for
understanding labor force participation dynamics over the life course.
Now, since some of them have been going for several decades,
they're actually turning into aging surveys as well.
The Health and Retirement Survey, this is one of the biggest and
most important surveys in the United States right now.
This is a longitudinal study of the aging population of the United States
that got started with samples that were initially collected in the early 1990s and
had been followed ever since.
Much of what we know about the dynamics of aging in the United States
comes from the analysis of the Health and Retirement Survey.
Thousands of papers has been published and
again a lot of what we know about the trajectories that the elderly follows is
they age the decent into dementia, the preservation of good health.
And then the relationships of these trajectories to
people's characteristics earlier in life.
Their family situations, their financial situation.
A lot of that comes from the health and retirement survey.
So if you're going to be working on aging in the United States,
it's almost certain that you're already working with the HRS.
There's another very interesting and
important survey that's been getting a lot of attention in recent decades which is
the national longitudinal study of adolescent health.
So this begun studying a cohort of adolescents sometime ago.
And it's been following them ever since.
So we get to follow people from the time that they were in high school
as they go on to college or in some cases go straight to the workforce.
By now some of the people in the survey are now in their 20s or
some cases even older, they have started to marry.
This is a remarkable survey because it collects incredible detail, not only
on me, individuals that are sampled in the survey but also on their social context.
Their peer networks within school, the characteristics of their schools and
of course their family backgrounds.
So a lot of what we know about the dynamics
of adolescent behaviour in the United States now
comes from the national longitudinal study of adolescent health.
I want to mention how longitudinal household surveys from other part of
the world as well, its not just the United States or
this important long between the surveys of being carried out.
One survey is going now for over decade actually since
1990's since Indonesian Family Life Survey which is been a national representative
sample of Indonesia that's been followed for quite some time now
that has studied the economic and family organization of households.
So it's given us a great deal of insight into family dynamics and the health and
the economic participation of people in Indonesia.
It's also been used heavily in comparative studies between Indonesia and
other countries for which there are also longitudinal studies.
The Mexican Family Life Survey,
as you can guess from the name is a longitudinal study families in Mexico.
And then of course, accounts for the fact that there is a lot of migration to and
from Mexico in the United States with special attention to the dynamics of that
migration and then the relationship to household characteristics in Mexico.
The German Socio-economic Panel is one of the major sources for
the study of the economic dynamic of households and
family dynamics in another developed country Germany.
The UK Household Longitudinal Survey similarly follows household overtime
in United Kingdom In recent years and has a very large sample.
So again now increasingly these and
other surveys are giving us a lot of detail at least in recent decades
about the dynamics of households in terms of their economic behavior,
their family organization, and in many cases there health dynamics as well.
And many of the survey are accessible.
Although they may have certain portions specially ones that related to do health
or more sensitive information were you may have to go through
application process to access.
Now, I want to give special attention to aging surveys
in various countries around the world.
The health and
retirement study that I mentioned earlier has inspired a variety of similar
longitudinal studies of the aged in a variety of countries around the world.
One reason that studies of the aged are so
popular of course is that many countries, the population is getting older.
And it's crucial to understand the dynamics of aging and
understand how economic factors and
other factors shape the trajectories that the elderly experience as they get older.
So one of the really big aging surveys is the Survey of Health Ageing and
Retirement in Europe.
Again, inspired by the health and
retirement survey and as well as other ageing surveys.
ELSA the English Longitudinal Study of Aging.
JSTAR, the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement.
MHAS, the Mexican Health and Aging Study.
All these studies are actually quite similar.
So similar that people are beginning to
conduct comparative studies by pooling these data together.
These studies typically include not only typical
questionnaire surveys asking people about their health,
their income, their relationships with their family members.
Many of them also collect what we call biomarker data.
Collecting blood, DNA other biomarkers that
are direct measures of health conditions in the elderly that allow us to link
very complex health conditions that are characteristic of the elderly
to a wide variety of economic and family factors.
So going forward we can look forward to a variety
of comparative aging studies using the pooled data from these surveys.
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