Exploring Data through Research Literature: An ICPSR Instructional Resources Project
About the Project | Exercises

Exercise 2: Other People

The Idea: Many students construct a research question before they know whether data exist to answer their question. They also often too willingly pass over a dataset that does not immediately appear to fit their research interests. Students will be able to conduct research more easily and efficiently if they can learn to think more openly about preexisting datasets.
The Question: How do different individuals examine and interpret the same data in varied ways?
A Note: This exercise (ZIP 10K) offers a tentative set of steps and questions instructors might use to direct students in exploiting the resources offered by ICPSR's Bibliography of Data-related Literature. Instructors might prefer to rearrange steps and append or eliminate questions, depending upon the goals and unanticipated turns of class discussion. Instructors are welcome to download the directions and questions, edit them to suit their teaching purposes and distribute them at will.

The Entry Article

The proposed article for this exercise is:

Krysan, Maria; Farley, Reynolds, "The residential preferences of Blacks: Do they explain persistent segregation?." Social Forces. Mar 2002, 80, (3), 937 - 980. (full text via JSTOR)

This article is suitable for undergraduates because:

  1. It addresses a social problem using both the popular and the scholarly literature: American racial residential segregation.

  2. Its research question negotiates between two competing hypotheses: does segregation persist because whites discriminate against blacks or because blacks choose to live in black neighborhoods?

  3. It tangles with issues of operationalization by using two indicators of black "preferences": the perceived attractiveness of a given neighborhood and one's willingness to live there.

  4. It features reproductions of the cards used in the survey's "hypothetical neighborhood technique," the use of which may evoke student interest and critique.

  5. It reports on qualitative data created from open-ended questions in the original survey.

This article is useful for an exercise drawing on ICPSR's Bibliography of Data-related Literature because:

  1. It uses data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, 1992-1994, which connects to 34 journal articles and a variety of other publications.

  2. Many discrete authors have analyzed this dataset. This varied use invites students to recognize how a dataset can answer multiple research questions.

  3. Furthermore, this dataset is available for online analysis. Instructors who would like to have their students explore the data themselves can easily do so.

(This article is in our Database of Application Articles.)

Guiding Questions

General

What are the authors' main research questions?

How do they reframe these questions as hypotheses?

How do the authors specify their independent and dependent variables?

How do the authors describe the dataset they use to answer their research question?

What are the authors' main findings and conclusions?

Is the article's argument convincing? Why or why not?

Specific

Why do the authors consider the two hypotheses "competing?"

Which hypothesis do their conclusions support?

Why do the authors use two measures of black preferences?

What problems might emerge when interviewers use the hypothetical neighborhood technique?

How does the qualitative data complement what the authors learn from the quantitative data?

The Data

Student Action Items

  1. Find the dataset, the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, 1992-1994, in ICPSR's general archive. Students can either type the dataset's title or its study number (2535) in ICPSR's main search box.

  2. Read about the dataset, after clicking on the link for "description." Read the material under the headings for "Bibliographic Description," "Scope of Study," and "Methodology."

  3. To examine the dataset's codebook, click on the "download" link. ICPSR will ask those who have never downloaded before to create a new account. Individuals who have downloaded before can simply sign in as a "returning user." To download only the codebook and not the data, students can click on "download individual files" under "Step 3."

Guiding Questions

Is the author of the entry article one of the principal investigators for this dataset? How many other scholars who have published off this dataset are also principal investigators?

How does the description of the dataset compare to how the authors describe it in the entry article? What are some of the unique features of this dataset?

What was the stated purpose of gathering the data for this dataset? How might the purpose have shaped the kinds of questions the researchers asked on the survey?

Which items listed in the "Scope of Study" might the principal investigator have intended to be independent variables? Dependent variables? Why? How does one usually know?

How would one describe the sample for this dataset? How does the dataset hold up under the criteria for external validity? What might the authors say about this issue?

What other research questions could the data from this dataset possibly answer? What research questions could this dataset probably not answer?

The Related Literature

Student Action Items

  1. Use the "search by word or phrase" option to find the entry article in ICPSR's Bibliography of Data-related Literature. For example, they might type "persistent segregation" into the search box to locate articles with titles that contain this phrase.

  2. Find the citation for the entry article and click on the "related data" link under this title.

  3. Click on the "related literature" link for the first dataset associated with this article (Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, 1992-1994). Click on "journal articles" to refine your search.

  4. Review the other scholarly works that have analyzed this dataset. Use the "sort" function on the top, right hand corner of the page to sort the list by author, title, or year.

Guiding Questions

How many works analyze the same dataset as the entry article? How many of these are journal articles? How many individual authors are represented in the list of journal articles?

Judging from the titles of the journals, in what disciplines do those who have analyzed this dataset appear to be publishing? Does it appear that those publishing in different disciplines are asking different kinds of research questions?

Judging from the titles of these works, how would one characterize the varied ways in which scholars have posed research questions they have tried to answer with this dataset?

In comparison to the entry article, are there articles that analyze this dataset that: (a) Use the same variables? (b) Answer the same research question? (c) Discuss the same theories? (d) Contradict the findings of the entry article?

Find three titles that have very clearly specified independent and dependent variables. When are the independent and dependent variables obvious from the title and why?

The Exit Article

Student Action Items

  1. Identify another article by a new author who analyzes the same dataset as the entry article (Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, 1992-1994).

  2. Locate a copy of the article.

Guiding Questions

Was the exit article published before or after the entry article?

How do the descriptions of the dataset in each article differ? What can one learn about the dataset from the exit article that was unknowable from the entry article (or vice versa)?

How do the research questions and conclusions for each article differ?

Do the entry and exit articles use the same independent and dependent variables? If not, how do they specify them differently?

Do(es) the author(s) mention theoretical or methodological concepts in the exit article similar to concepts that appeared in the entry article? Do(es) the author(s) introduce new concepts? What might these mean?

Does the knowledge produced in one of the articles contribute to the knowledge produced in the other?

Do(es) the author(s) of either entry or exit article cite the other article? If so, how?