2.4: Raw data

Learning Objectives

Learners will be able to...

• Identify potential sources of available data
• Weigh the challenges and benefits of collecting your own data

In our previous section, we addressed some of the challenges researchers face in collecting and analyzing raw data. Just as a reminder, raw data are unprocessed, unanalyzed data that researchers analyze using social science research methods. It is not just the statistics or qualitative themes in journal articles. It is the actual data from which those statistical outputs or themes are derived (e.g., interview transcripts or survey responses).

There are two approaches to getting raw data. First, students can analyze data that are publicly available or from agency records. Using secondary data like this can make projects more feasible, but you may not find existing data that are useful for answering your working question. For that reason, many students gather their own raw data. As we discussed in the previous section, potential harms that come from addressing sensitive topics mean that surveys and interviews of practitioners or other less-vulnerable populations may be the most feasible and ethical way to approach data collection.

Another great example from my class this year was a student who used existing program evaluations at their agency as raw data in her student research project. If you are practicing at a grant funded agency, administrators and clinicians are likely producing data for grant reporting. Your agency may consent to have you look at the raw data and run your own analysis. Larger agencies may also conduct internal research—for example, surveying employees or clients about new initiatives. These, too, can be good sources of available data. Generally, if your agency has already collected the data, you can ask to use them. Again, it is important to be clear on the boundaries and expectations of your agency. And don’t be angry if they say no!

Some agencies, usually government agencies, publish their data in formal reports. You could take a look at some of the websites for county or state agencies to see if there are any publicly available data relevant to your research topic. As an example, perhaps there are annual reports from the state department of education that show how seclusion and restraint is disproportionately applied to Black children with disabilities, as students found in Virginia. In my class last year, one student matched public data from our city’s map of criminal incidents with historically redlined neighborhoods. For this project, she is using publicly available data from Mapping Inequality, which digitized historical records of redlined housing communities and the Roanoke, VA crime mapping webpage. By matching historical data on housing redlining with current crime records, she is testing whether redlining still impacts crime to this day.

Not all public data are easily accessible, though. The student in the previous example was lucky that scholars had digitized the records of how Virginia cities were redlined by race. Sources of historical data are often located in physical archives, rather than digital archives. If your project uses historical data in an archive, it would require you to physically go to the archive in order to review the data. Unless you have a travel budget, you may be limited to the archival data in your local libraries and government offices. Similarly, government data may have to be requested from an agency, which can take time. If the data are particularly sensitive or if the department would have to dedicate a lot of time to your request, you may have to file a Freedom of Information Act request. This process can be time-consuming, and in some cases, it will add financial cost to your study.

Another source of secondary data is shared by researchers as part of the publication and review process. There is a growing trend in research to publicly share data so others can verify your results and attempt to replicate your study. In more recent articles, you may notice links to data provided by the researcher. Often, these have been de-identified by eliminating some information that could lead to violations of confidentiality. You can browse through the data repositories in Table 2.1 to find raw data to analyze. Make sure that you pick a data set with thorough and easy to understand documentation. You may also want to use Google’s dataset search which indexes some of the websites below as well as others in a very intuitive and easy to use way.

Table 2.1 Sources of publicly available data

Organizational home	Focus/topic	Data	Web address
National Opinion Research Center	General Social Survey; demographic, behavioral, attitudinal, and special interest questions; national sample	Quantitative	https://gss.norc.org/
Carolina Population Center	Add Health; longitudinal social, economic, psychological, and physical well-being of cohort in grades 7–12 in 1994	Quantitative	http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth
Center for Demography of Health and Aging	Wisconsin Longitudinal Study; life course study of cohorts who graduated from high school in 1957	Quantitative	https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/
Institute for Social & Economic Research	British Household Panel Survey; longitudinal study of British lives and well- being	Quantitative	https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/bhps
International Social Survey Programme	International data similar to GSS	Quantitative	http://www.issp.org/
The Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University	Large archive of written data, audio, and video focused on many topics	Quantitative and qualitative	http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn/dv/
Institute for Research on Women and Gender	Global Feminisms Project; interview transcripts and oral histories on feminism and women’s activism	Qualitative	https://globalfeminisms.umich.edu/
Oral History Office	Descriptions and links to numerous oral history archives	Qualitative	https://archives.lib.uconn.edu/islan...002%3A19840025
UNC Wilson Library	Digitized manuscript collection from the Southern Historical Collection	Qualitative	http://dc.lib.unc.edu/ead/archivalho...chivalhome.php?
Qualitative Data Repository	A repository of qualitative data that can be downloaded and annotated collaboratively with other researchers	Qualitative	https://qdr.syr.edu/

Ultimately, you will have to weigh the strengths and limitations of using secondary data on your own. Engel and Schutt (2016, p. 327)\(^6\) propose six questions to ask before using secondary data:

1. What were the agency’s or researcher’s goals in collecting the data?
2. What data were collected, and what were they intended to measure?
3. When was the information collected?
4. What methods were used for data collection? Who was responsible for data collection, and what were their qualifications? Are they available to answer questions about the data?
5. How is the information organized (by date, individual, family, event, etc.)? Are identifiers used to
   indicate different types of data available?
6. What is known about the success of the data collection effort? How are missing data indicated and treated? What kind of documentation is available? How consistent are the data with data available

In this section, we’ve talked about data as though it is always collected by scientists and professionals. But that’s definitely not the case! Think more broadly about sources of data that are already out there in the world. Perhaps you want to examine the different topics mentioned in the past 10 State of the Union addresses by the President. One of my students this past semester is examining whether the websites and public information about local health and mental health agencies use gender-inclusive language. People share their experiences through blogs, social media posts, videos, performances, among countless other sources of data. When you think broadly about data, you’ll be surprised how much you can answer with available data.

 

Collecting your own raw data

The primary benefit of collecting your own data is that it allows you to collect and analyze the specific data you are looking for, rather than relying on what other people have shared. You can make sure the right questions are asked to the right people. For a student project, data collection is going to look a little different than what you read in most journal articles. Established researchers probably have access to more resources than you do, and as a result, are able to conduct more complicated studies. Student projects tend to be smaller in scope. This isn’t necessarily a limitation. Student projects are often the first step in a long research trajectory in which the same topic is studied in increasing detail and sophistication over time.

Students in my class often propose to survey or interview practitioners. The focus of these projects should be about the practice of social work and the study will uncover how practitioners understand what they do. Surveys of practitioners often test whether responses to questions are related to each other. For example, you could propose to examine whether someone’s length of time in practice was related to the type of therapy they use or their level of burnout. Interviews or focus groups can also illuminate areas of practice. A student in my class proposed to conduct focus groups of individuals in different helping professions in order to understand how they viewed the process of leaving an abusive partner. She suspected that people from different disciplines would make unique assumptions about the survivor’s choices.

It’s worth remembering here that you need to have access to practitioners, as we discussed in the previous section. Resourceful students will look at publicly available databases of practitioners, draw from agency and personal contacts, or post in public forums like Facebook groups. Consent from gatekeepers is important, and as we described earlier, you and your agency may be interested in collaborating on a project. Bringing your agency on board as a stakeholder in your project may allow you access to company email lists or time at staff meetings as well as access to practitioners. One of our students last year partnered with her internship placement at a local hospital to measure the burnout of that nurses experienced in their department. Her project helped the agency identify which departments may need additional support.

Another possible way you could collect data is by partnering with your agency on evaluating an existing program. Perhaps they want you to evaluate the early stage of a program to see if it’s going as planned and if any changes need to be made. Maybe there is an aspect of the program they haven’t measured but would like to, and you can fill that gap for them. Collaborating with agency partners in this way can be a challenge, as you must negotiate roles, get stakeholder buy-in, and manage the conflicting time schedules of field work and research work. At the same time, it allows you to make your work immediately relevant to your specific practice and client population.

In summary, many student projects fall into one of the following categories. These aren’t your only options! But they may be helpful in thinking about what students projects can look like.

• Analyzing chart or program evaluations at an agency
• Analyzing existing data from an agency, government body, or other public source
• Analyzing popular media or cultural artifacts
• Surveying or interviewing practitioners, administrators, or other less-vulnerable groups
• Conducting a program evaluation in collaboration with an agency

 

Key Takeaways

• All research projects require analyzing raw data.
• Student projects often analyze available data from agencies, government, or public sources. Doing so allows students to avoid the process of recruiting people to participate in their study. This makes projects more feasible but limits what you can study to the data that are already available to you.
• Student projects should avoid potentially harmful or sensitive topics when surveying or interviewing clients and other vulnerable populations. Since many social work topics are sensitive, students often collect data from less-vulnerable populations such as practitioners and administrators.

 

Exercises

1. Describe the difference between raw data and the results of research articles.
2. Identify potential sources of secondary data that might help you answer your working question.
   1. Consider browsing around the data repositories in Table 2.1.
3. Identify one of the common types of student projects (e.g., surveys of practitioners) and how conducting a similar project might help you answer your working question.