User Stories
Here is a growing list of user stories that will help you understand how various types of people take advantage of the ICPSR Bibliography of Data-related Literature. Each user story follows a typical format:
As a (user role), I want (goal), so that (benefit).
Select which User Story to view:
Undergraduate Student
![](http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/ICPSR/biblio/biblio_undergraduate_student.png)
Undergraduate User Story:
As a senior in a capstone course,
I want to find data I can use to write a paper,
so that I can generate statistics and use them in the paper as part of the assigned work.
Details
Topics/Search Terms:
- race relations
- high school students
Challenges:
-
My paper proposal is due on Monday, and I need to find a dataset I can analyze online without knowing a stats package.
Data needs:
- I need data that can speak to high school students’ attitudes about race and equality.
Goals
- Find publications linked to data that can be analyzed online.
- Examine publications to see what ICPSR study data were used by the authors to get at attitudes on race in high school.
Faculty Liaison Librarian
![](http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/ICPSR/biblio/biblio_faculty_liaison.png)
Faculty Liaison Librarian User Story:
As an academic librarian assisting a small group of faculty and grad assistants as they draft a proposal,
I want to compile articles that are linked to sentencing data, to determine which of the studies would be usable by the research team,
so that they can determine if public-use data will be sufficient to meet the needs of the team.
Details
Topics/Search Terms:
- sentencing disparities
- criminal justice
Challenges:
- Unaware of the availability of the breadth of public use data on sentencing disparities.
Data needs:
- Must be nationally representative.
Goals
- Get a good idea of the way a subset of relevant data are discussed and used in the literature.
- Prepare a report to the research group about the characteristics of data available to determine whether the team must apply for restricted data.
Graduate Student
![](http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/ICPSR/biblio/biblio_graduate_student.jpg)
Grad Student User Story:
As an early-career researcher,
I want to reduce the time/effort it takes to conduct a literature review and examine certain variables,
so that I can find the highest quality data for my needs
Details
Topics/Search Terms:
- India
- sanitation and child development
Challenges:
- Limited familiarity with the topic of interest.
- Limited resources and time for acquiring data, so looking for appropriate data for secondary use.
Data needs:
- Demographic data from India.
Goals
- Find useful data for my research question.
- Narrow my topic, based on the current state of the literature.
Grant Writer
![](http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/ICPSR/biblio/biblio_grant_writer.png)
Grant Writer User Story:
As a staff member at a community non-profit providing arts/cultural summer events,
I want to access published reports with summarized statistics describing community characteristics and interests,
so that I have enough supporting evidence when preparing a successful grant proposal for funding
Details
Topics/Search Terms:
- arts participation
- positive impacts of the arts
Challenges:
- Lack of enough resources (time, money, staff) to conduct surveys to estimate community's characteristics and interests.
- Lack of supporting evidence to prove potential positive outcome of the project.
Goals
- Be able to cite published summarized statistics that were derived from national surveys of participation in arts, time spent on arts, or the impact of arts and culture.
Instructor
![](http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/ICPSR/biblio/biblio_instructor.png)
Instructor User Story:
As a faculty member teaching an introductory graduate stats class,
I want to see publications using different modeling techniques in their titles,
so that I can direct my students to data-linked literature using those modeling techniques.
Details
Topics/Search Terms:
- Bayesian
- model
- Regression
Challenges:
- Limited time to search for example articles and track down the underlying data that were used for the modeling techniques in each.
Data needs:
- I want to limit search to certain data series I am very familiar with, which contain robust longitudinal data.
Goals
- Search within a series for publications containing words in their titles referring to various modeling or analysis techniques.