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

Exercise 3: Other Datasets

The Idea: The claims social scientists make about the social world that gain scientific legitimacy are those confirmed by multiple scholars who have analyzed data from numerous sources. Students can benefit from tracing social science examples of this triangulation.
The Question: How do different individuals address similar research questions with different data?
A Note: This exercise (ZIP 11K) 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:

Batalova, Jeanne A.; Cohen, Philip N., "Premarital cohabitation and housework: Couples in cross-national perspective." Journal of Marriage and Family. Aug 2002, 64, (3), 743 - 755.

This article is suitable for undergraduates because:

  1. It addresses an issue that encourages students to reflect on their own family experiences: division of labor in the household.

  2. It addresses an issue of impending relevance to students: cohabitation.

  3. It clearly states a hypothesis in a form recognizable to students ("We expect that...").

  4. It discusses variables that point to different units of analysis (couples and countries).

  5. It contains tables with descriptive statistics and scatter plots that foster students' data interpretation skills.

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

  1. It uses data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP): Family and Changing Gender Roles II, 1994, which connects to 20 scholarly works.

  2. The topics of "household division of labor" and of "family life" are general enough that other ICPSR datasets also speak to the research questions such topics inspire. Students will need to find other datasets that speak to these issues, thus such generality is crucial.

(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

What do the two scatter plots in this article show?

What can you quickly learn about the dataset and about the countries of interest from the tables' descriptive statistics?

Why do the authors distinguish between different "levels" of independent variables?

The Data

Student Action Items

  1. Find the dataset, the International Social Survey Program (ISSP): Family and Changing Gender Roles II, 1994, in ICPSR's general archive. Students can either type the dataset's title or its study number (6914) 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

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?

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?

In the "Methodology" section, what can one learn about how the researchers gathered the data? Why might these methods be important for the sorts of questions asked in the survey?

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. Return to the description for the dataset associated with this article (International Social Survey Program (ISSP): Family and Changing Gender Roles II, 1994).

  2. Examine the "subject terms" ICPSR has assigned to this dataset and to click on the subject term that most accurately describes the entry article's concerns.

  3. Review the datasets ICPSR classified under this subject term. Select a dataset that seems like it might also appeal to the interests of the entry article's authors.

  4. 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

Judging from their titles and descriptions, what other datasets might also speak to some of the research interests that the authors of the entry article voiced?

What one alternative dataset might best serve those authors' interests? What sorts of questions found in the codebook might serve as good independent and dependent variables?

How many works analyze this new dataset? 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 new 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?

The Exit Article

Student Action Items

  1. Identify an article written by new authors and that analyzes a different dataset from the entry article (i.e., something other than the International Social Survey Program (ISSP): Family and Changing Gender Roles II, 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?