Odum Institute: Big Data, Big Deal?

Big Data, Big Deal? Exploring the Potential & Peril of Modern Data Sources for Social Science Research

This 5-hour course will be offered online only. Attendance is required – this course will not be recorded.

In this workshop we will offer an overview of big data types and sources and discuss their potential for survey and social science research as well as pitfalls. Specifically we will discuss social media data, digital trace data, administrative data and sensor data through a total data quality lens. We will address quality issues with each type of data, possible error frameworks to use in working with these specific data types and discuss ways to quantity data quality through a collection of metrics. We end the workshop with a discussion of how to maximize data quality for these data sources. The workshop will include several examples of work taken from the recent survey research, social science and information systems science literature and we will also include several interactive activities aimed at reinforcing key concepts around recognizing and possibly mitigating quality issues that may arise when working with these data types for social science type research.

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