We’ll do a quick data biography for several common social science data sources. As we discussed, we want to answer the who, how, and why questions for the source. With that information, we’ll assess how the researchers positionality may affect the data, in both positive and negative ways.

We want to think about what information is present in the data source: what variables are available for analysis based on the why and how questions. For a couple of variables, we’ll reflect on reliability and validity.

But we also want to think about what is missing. Given the general aims of the project, whose experiences are omitted from the data, and how might these absences distort our understanding if we use the source for data analysis?

Activity, part 1
1. Exploring Strategies to Improve Health and Equity in Rural Communities – https://www.norc.org/Research/Projects/Pages/exploring-strategies-to-improve-health-and-equity-in-rural-communities.aspx

2. American National Election Study – https://electionstudies.org/

3. The American Trends Panel – https://www.pewresearch.org/our-methods/u-s-surveys/the-american-trends-panel/

4. General Social Survey – https://gss.norc.org/

Now, based on the data biography for the American Trends Panel survey, we can do some data analysis and apply some of the principles of data feminism in considering the sociological meaning of our results. Here’s a notebook: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1gcWtIcJb1VFu-w4ZKVyybpIpxe5uel-i?usp=sharing

We’ll consider a table together, then each group will produce a different table and apply the principles in a similar manner.