Data for Your Paper

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Data for Your Paper

• BA 4990H
• 2/18/09

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Table of Contents

• Connecting your topic to data
• Troubleshooting
• Potential Sources

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Connecting your topic to data

• What are the longer term consequences of taking
  on debt to pay for education?

?
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Who, What, When, Where

• What are the longer term consequences of taking
  on debt to pay for education?
• How long is longer term?
• 10 years, 20 years, life-time earnings
• Consequences for whom?
•  student, parent, institution, governments
• What kind of debt?
• private loans, grants to students, home equity
  lines
• What level of education
• elementary, secondary, post-secondary

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Develop a hypothesis to (dis)prove

• Restating as a true/false/maybe statement helps
  to articulate the who, what, when, where
• While student loan debt does decrease the amount
  of disposable income after college, the overall
  increase in the student's lifetime earning power
  is significant enough to result in greater total
  earnings
• Relevant measures disposable income by
  education, lifetime earnings by educational level
  

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Troubleshooting Jargon 1
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Troubleshooting Jargon 2

•  

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Troubleshooting Flexibility

• Can you still make your point with the data you
  have found?
• Usually an issue of smaller geographic areas,
  short time intervals, or very specific population
  groups
• do you really need your data by zip code?
• what happens if you use quarterly intervals
  instead of monthly?
• can you work with a population of "white,
  non-hispanic" instead of Mexican-American?

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Troubleshooting datas not enough

• Example I can find foreign direct investment
  (fdi) trends, but the data dont indicate what
  causes the trends
• Your paper may really end up being an analysis of
  someone elses analysis
• In this case, you want to use journal literature
  to find out what analyses are out there or
  develop your own analyses

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Troubleshooting questioning the data

• Even though you have to think in concrete terms
  in order to define your data needs, socioeconomic
  data may be controversial
• In October 2008, the Congressional Budget Office
  reported that 17 billion of the TARP funds from
  the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act had been
  spent by the Department of the Treasury.
• The same month, Treasury reported that it had
  spent 115 billion.
• Both were referring to the same expenditure,
  but counting very differently
• See http//www.lib.umn.edu/data/ for more details
  and links to reports
• Whos right? Or telling the truth?
• There may be no single right answer
• Again, this is a case in which you will want to
  use journal literature to decide for yourself
  which position you will take in your paper

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Databases Licenced by the Libraries

• Databases licensed by the University Libraries
• Includes databases of data
• Includes journal article databases
• Covers social sciences
• Social Science Research Network
• Licensed by the libraries too

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Data in the Wild

• Survey data from archives or the original
• Health and Retirement Survey
• National Compensation Survey
• Current population survey
• Retirement Confidence Survey
• Inter-University Consortium for Political and
  Social Research (ICPSR)
• National Bureau for Economic Research
• EUROSTAT

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Get the Most out of the Web

• Google Scholar
• Advanced Searching in Google
• Sitegov or sitecensus.gov
• Filetypexls
• Google Government
• Includes state, local, federal
• IGO Web Search
• custom Google Search Engine
• especially useful for topics like microfinance
• REPEC
• decentralized database of freely available
  working papers, journal articles and software
  components

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U.S. Government Analysis

• Congressional Research Service
• "Causes of the Economic Crisis
• Congressional Budget Office
• Site section on the housing market
• Government Accountability Office 

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Conclusion

• In general, data is more readily available than
  ever
• It's not necessarily any easier to find
• Ask me 
• westx045_at_umn.edu 
• http//www.lib.umn.edu/data - chat window
• Rm. 1 Wilson Library my office