Overview
Week 4Lab Assignment
Part I: Creating Data Tables (15 points)
You are running a community organization which works to promote health and wellness in the Philadelphia area. You have managed to secure 3 years of grant funding for a research project to identify areas of high need and develop targeted initiatives to improve health and wellness outcomes in those areas.
In order to do this, you need to collect data on health and wellness behaviors and relevant outcomes from each ZIP code in Philadelphia. You will use a digital survey, promoted on social media, to gather information from individuals in each Philly ZIP code. You will also use publicly available data in order toidentify health and wellness infrastructure (things which contribute to health and wellness in an area, like gyms) in each ZIP code. Finally, you will record demographic information (such as income) about each ZIP code.
1. Identify 2 health and wellness behaviors that you will record about each person you survey. How will you measure these?
2. Identify 2 health and wellness outcomes that you will record about each person you survey. How will you measure these?
3. Identify 2 aspects of health and wellness infrastructure that you will collect about each ZIP code in Philadelphia. How will you measure these?
4. Identify 2 demographic variables that you will collect about each ZIP code in Philadelphia. How will you measure these?
Your grant requires that you monitor the outcomes of your initiatives over time and submit annual reports on your progress. This means that you’ll need to track your identified variables over time, every year for a 3-year period.
Your task is to use Excel to build a data storage schema for all the data you have identified in the questions above. In an Excel workbook, create at least one data table to demonstrate the format in which you will record your data. Please also include 5-10 example observations in each table in order to demonstrate some possible values of the variables you are using.
Here is an example of what one such table might look like. You will have to determine your own variables, layout, and values.
Remember, you will need to be able to record 3 separate years of data about individuals as well as ZIP codes as a whole. Therefore, you should think very carefully about the unit of analysis for each type of data you are collecting. Will you store all of your data in one table or spread it across multiple tables?Will you add additional observations for data in subsequent years, or will you create additional variables to keep track of them?
Please submit your Excel workbook along with this assignment.
Part II: Finding Data (15 points)
As a researcher, it is important to know not just how to collect data, but how to acquire it. Finding good organizational or public data sources will save you tons of time and often be more accurate than what you could feasibly collect by hand.
One way to find public datasets is by searching for them in a data repository. Data repositories are centralized archives for storing and downloading datasets. Some good public data repositories are:
• Data.gov for governmental data
• Pew Research Center for research data
• Google Dataset Search for general purpose data
• OpenDataPhilly for data specific to Philadelphia
• Kaggle for community-published datasets
Based on the research topic that you have identified with your group, use one of these sites to search for a dataset pertaining to your research. This data does not have to speak to your research question specifically, but it should be related somehow to the topic. As we go along, you will be using this data for visualization and analysis.
Your dataset should contain at least 3 numerical variables and 2 categorical variables. Ideally, you are looking for data files which can be opened in Excel. These will be denoted by a file extension of csv, xls, or xlsx.
Once you have selected a dataset, please answer the following questions:
1. What is the source of the dataset? What person or group collected the data, and where did you locate it? How do you know that this is a trustworthy source?
2. What is the unit of analysis? Does each observation correspond to a person, a location, or something else? At what place and time were these data collected?
3. What key variables does the dataset contain? What kinds of variables are each of these? What is each one measuring?
4. What is the value of your dataset? What information might you be able to glean from the data set? What might this be able to tell you about your research topic?
Please submit your dataset or a link to it along with this assignment.