Surveys, Sampling & Interviews

Transparency in Experimental Political Science Research

April 9, 2024
Kamya Yadav
by Kamya Yadav. With the increase in studies with experiments in political science research, there are concerns about research transparency, particularly around reporting results from studies that contradict or do not find evidence for proposed theories (commonly called “null results”). To encourage publication of results with null results, political scientists have turned to pre-registering their experiments, be it online survey experiments or large-scale experiments conducted in the field. What does pre-registration look like and how can it help during data analysis and publication?

How can we use big data from iNaturalist to address important questions in Entomology?

February 26, 2024
Leah Lee
by Leah Lee. Large-scale geographic data over time on insect diversity can be used to answer important questions in Entomology. Open-source, open-access citizen science platforms like iNaturalist generate huge amounts of data on species diversity and distribution at accelerating rates. However, unstructured citizen science data contain inherent biases and need to be used with care. One of the efforts to validate big data from iNaturalist is to cross-check with systematically collected data, such as museum specimens.

Tonya D. Lindsey, Ph.D.

Data Science Fellow
Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS)

Tonya D. Lindsey is a visiting scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies and the project director of CRB Nexus: Where Policy Meets Research, an initiative of the California Research Bureau (CRB) at the California State Library. As project director of CRB Nexus, she is developing a community of practice space for California’s policy staff and public scholars. As a CRB senior researcher she uses her expertise in research methods to analyze a wide variety of policy questions at the request of legislators, the governor’s office, and their staff. She received her PhD in sociology...

Exploratory Data Analysis in Social Science Research

November 14, 2023
Kamya Yadav
by Kamya Yadav. Causal inference has become the dominant endeavor for many political scientists, often at the expense of good research questions and theory building. Returning to descriptive inference – the process of describing the world as it exists – can help formulate research questions worth asking and theory that is grounded in reality. Exploratory data analysis is one method of conducting descriptive inference. It can help social science researchers find empirical patterns and puzzles that motivate their research questions, test correlations between variables, and engage with the existing literature on a topic. In this blog post, I walk through results from exploratory data analysis I conducted for my dissertation project on political ambition of women.

FSRDC 2023 Annual Meeting and Research Conference

October 2, 2023
Renee Starowicz, Ph.D.
by Renee Starowicz. Renee Starowicz, Co-Executive Director of the Berkeley Federal Statistical Research Data Center, provides an overview of the takeaways from the 2023 Annual Federal Statistical Research Data Center Business Meeting and Annual Conference. She provides a brief overview of the Berkeley FSRDC. Then, she describes the priorities for collaboration across national directors to improve outreach to diverse researchers and transparency. Additionally, she points out the other key topics of conversation at this year’s meeting.

Michael Ruiz

IUSE Research Team
Psychology

Michael earned his B.A.in Psychology from UC Berkeley and currently works as the manager of Professor Okonofua's Equity, Diversity, and Empathy Navigation Sciences Lab in the UC Berkeley Psychology department.

Wadzanai Makomva

Discovery Graduate Fellow
School of Information

Wadzanai is a graduate student at the School of Information and she is a part of the MIMS program. She has a vested interest in the integration between data science, technology and developmental surveillance techniques. She has prior experience working as a quantitative analyst in project management consulting within a professional services firm, public health, and most recently in sustainable construction materials. Wadzanai is particularly interested in increasing access of STEM subjects and fields to under-privileged women of color in the African continent, particularly her home...

Aniket Gupta

Discovery Fellow
School of Information

I am a first year masters student at UC Berkeley school of Information majoring in Information Management and Systems with a focus on Data Science and ML. I like to build optimized yet simple and scalable solutions powered by data using emerging AI technologies.

Exploring Population Data with IPUMS

November 8, 2022
Kelly Quinn
Exploring Population Data with IPUMS

Last month, demographer and historian Steve Ruggles was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his work developing IPUMS—a harmonized database of individual and family responses to large-scale domestic and international surveys. With some samples going as far back as the 18th century, IPUMS can offer key insights into changing demographics, norms, and decision-making over...

Getting Started with Surveys

October 18, 2022
Ariel Siegel
Getting Started With Surveys

Surveys can be an extremely useful tool for gathering information from individuals and groups. They are used across disciplines and industries to help researchers learn more about populations and gain actionable insights. I’ve done extensive survey research in nonprofit and industry settings, using these data to improve programs, make changes to technology, design communications plans, make content acquisition decisions, and much more. In this blog post, I’ll focus on one of the most important parts of survey research — planning....