Working with Research Data
Assistance with Statistics & Informatics at OU
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- Data Analytics and VisualizationScience Librarian Claire Curry has created the Data Analytics and Visualization research guide to connect OU library users to local services, data sources, analysis tools, and sources of literature on experimental design, software, and evidence synthesis across many disciplines.
- Data Services @ OU LibrariesDigital Scholarship and Data Services is a unit that supports OU community members with their data needs. Consult with specialists and graduate assistants who are familiar with working with data, including management, analysis and visualization. With the ability to ask questions and receive guidance, Data Services: Research Data is the focal point to help faculty, researchers, and students work with their data.
- OU Supercomputing Center for Education and ResearchThe OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research, a division of OU Information Technology, helps undergraduates, grad students, faculty and staff to learn and use advanced computing in their science and engineering research and education.
Environment & Sustainability Datasets
- Human ProgressProject of the Cato Institute with data to explore from around the world.
- Chemical Effects in Biological Systems (CEBS)NIEHS supported public data sets.
- Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI)Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) is a freely available dictionary of molecular entities focused on ‘small’ chemical compounds. (European Bioinformatics Institute)
- Comparative Toxigenomics Database (CTD)CTD illuminates how environmental chemicals affect human health.
- DataONE (Data Observation Network for Earth)Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE) is the foundation of new innovative environmental science through a distributed framework and sustainable cyberinfrastructure that meets the needs of science and society for open, persistent, robust, and secure access to well-described and easily discovered Earth observational data.
- Environmental Genome ProjectThe NIEHS Environmental Genome Project is a multi-disciplinary, collaborative effort focused on examining the relationships between environmental exposures, inter-individual sequence variation in human genes and disease risk in U.S. populations.
- IASSIST Data SourcesInternational Association for Social Science Information Services & Technology data sources.
- National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences DatabasesLinks to 12 science related data sets supported by NIEHS.
- OpenDOARDirectory of Open Access Repositories.
Spatial Datasets
- Finding GIS DataAn Oklahoma-based guide listing many of the resources below and more.
- GeoNames"Database covers all countries and contains over eleven million placenames that are available for download free of charge."
- Physical maps available at Youngblood Energy LibraryHow to find maps in the Youngblood Energy (Geology) Library in Sarkey's Energy Center.
Global Data
- DataONE (Data Observation Network for Earth)Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE) is the foundation of new innovative environmental science through a distributed framework and sustainable cyberinfrastructure that meets the needs of science and society for open, persistent, robust, and secure access to well-described and easily discovered Earth observational data.
- ESRI Open Data HubOpen Data Portal hosted by the publisher of ArcGIS.
- Native Land"Native Land Digital is a Canadian not-for-profit organization, incorporated in December 2018. Native Land Digital is Indigenous-led, with an Indigenous Executive Director and Board of Directors who oversee and direct the organization. [...] Maps potentially function as colonial artifacts and represent a very particular way of seeing the world – a way primarily concerned with ownership, exclusivity, and power relations."
- IPUMS (Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation)"Census and survey data from around the world integrated across time and space."
- Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)"SEDAC, the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, is one of the Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) in the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Focusing on human interactions in the environment, SEDAC has as its mission to develop and operate applications that support the integration of socioeconomic and earth science data and to serve as an "Information Gateway" between earth sciences and social sciences."
- Gapminder"Gapminder produces free teaching resources making the world understandable based on reliable statistics."
- PANGAEA. Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science"The information system PANGAEA is operated as an Open Access library aimed at archiving, publishing and distributing georeferenced data from earth system research. The system guarantees long-term availability of its content through a commitment of the hosting institutions."
- WorldPop"Within the WorldPop project a range of open geospatial datasets are combined in a flexible regression tree framework to reallocate contemporary aggregated spatial population count data."
United States
- Geospatial Data GatewaySponsored by the USDA and Natural Resources Conservation Service
- CEC North American Environmental AtlasCommission for Environmental Cooperation
- PolicyMap"An idea in 2007 to make geographic data easily accessible and understandable to policy makers grew into what is now PolicyMap: a data warehouse of over 50,000 indicators accessible through a state-of-the-art mapping and analytics platform."
- Mapping Police Violence"This information has been meticulously sourced from the three largest, most comprehensive and impartial crowdsourced databases on police killings in the country: FatalEncounters.org, the U.S. Police Shootings Database and KilledbyPolice.net. We've also done extensive original research to further improve the quality and completeness of the data; searching social media, obituaries, criminal records databases, police reports and other sources to identify the race of 90 percent of all victims in the database." Provides map and infographics as well as raw data download as spreadsheet.
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationSearch within the research areas on the site for GIS data specific to your needs.
- Census BureauLearn about America's communities through our data profiles. They cover 100,000+ different geographies: states, counties, places, tribal areas, zip codes, and congressional districts. For each, we cover topics like education, employment, health, and housing just to name a few.
- Dallas-Forth Worth Federal Statistical Research Data CenterPartnership between the U.S. Census Bureau and a consortium that includes the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, the University of Texas at Arlington, Southern Methodist University, the University of North Texas, and the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council Foundation. OU is also a consortium member so OU researchers can contact this branch for help with US Census data.
- NHGISNational Historic Geographic Information System
Hosted by University of Minnesota - U.S. Geological SurveyLinks to National Map, National Atlas and Geospatial One Stop
- US Bureau of Land ManagementEach office has their own data centers.
- Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America"Redlining directed both public and private capital to native-born white families and away from African American and immigrant families. As homeownership was arguably the most significant means of intergenerational wealth building in the United States in the twentieth century, these redlining practices from eight decades ago had long-term effects in creating wealth inequalities that we still see today. Mapping Inequality, we hope, will allow and encourage you to grapple with this history of government policies contributing to inequality." The data are available as shapefiles and GeoJSON, and are searchable by description, transcription, city, and state.
- Data 4 Black Lives: COVID-19 Data"D4BL has worked to consolidate state level data to explore the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black people in the US. The D4BL COVID-19 Dataset captures state-level COVID-19 cases and deaths for Black people in the United States. D4BL established a team of volunteer data scientists to develop a codebase for automating the data extraction from state websites and storing it into this dataset."
- Inuit Siku (sea ice) Atlas"A group of Inuit experts, community researchers, and university researchers, have worked together over the past several years to document specialized Inuit knowledge about sea ice. Inuit elders and hunters are the local experts on sea ice. Through long term observation and experience with the sea ice, they have developed deep and rich understandings of the marine environment"
Oklahoma
GIS Software
- ArcGIS DesktopPowerful proprietary desktop software for GIS.
- ArcGIS OU LicensingClick the blue "Access Software" button on the page. The OU Libraries link on the page is no longer functional as OU has moved to a single-sign-on licensing format for ArcGIS.
- Project RFree and open source programming environment. Requires installation of additional packages to enable most GIS applications.
- PythonInformation and downloads for the Python programming language.
- Python AnacondaOpen source Python 3.7 platform for data science.
- Quantum GIS (QGIS)A free and open-source GIS software including both a graphical user interface and options for accessing command line resources.
Tutorials & Help
- ArcGIS documentationStep-by-step instructions and documentation for ArcGIS software including ArcMap.
- ArcGIS training materials by ESRITutorials for ArcGIS produced by the software company. Request an OU-linked ESRI account using the OU licensing link above.
- Python in ArcGISESRI free video tutorial on scripting with Python for ArcGIS.
- QGIS tutorialsLinks compiled by QGIS maintainers for QGIS training materials and tutorials in multiple languages.
- Learning geospatial analysis with python : understand GIS fundamentals and perform remote sensing data analysis using python 3.7 byCall Number: Online accessISBN: 1789957931Publication Date: 2019"This book will take you through GIS techniques, geodatabases, geospatial raster data, and much more using the latest built-in tools and libraries in Python 3.7." Recommended by a grad student who found chapters 2 and 3 explained a lot of concepts that get glossed over in courses.
- R-Spatialr-spatial.org is a website and blog for those interested in using R to analyse spatial or spatio-temporal data.
- Geocomputation in R"This book is about using the power of computers to do things with geographic data. It teaches a range of spatial skills, including: reading, writing and manipulating geographic data; making static and interactive maps; applying geocomputation to solve real-world problems; and modeling geographic phenomena."
- GIS Help at OUThis page features projects on which OU Libraries has assisted with GIS work and contains a link to the Digital Scholarship Lab for consultations.
- Stack Exchange for GISA searchable question and answer website for GIS users. If you can't find your answer, you can create a reproducible example and ask your own question.
Experimental Design for Social Sciences
- Essentials of Statistics for the Social and Behavioral Sciences byCall Number: HA 29 .C655 2004ISBN: 0471220310Publication Date: 2003"Guides you to a better understanding of basic concepts of statistical methods. Numerous practical tips are presented for selecting appropriate statistical procedures."
- Understanding and Applying Research Design byCall Number: eBookISBN: 1118605268Publication Date: 2013-01-03
- Interpretive Approaches to Research Design byCall Number: eBookISBN: 020385490xPublication Date: 2011-12-15
Qualitative Research Methods
- Investigating Our Experience in the World byCall Number: H 62 .M6447 2011ISBN: 9781572337596Publication Date: 2011"Leads readers through framing the project and undertaking the initial bracketing interview to conducting phenomenological interviews with participants, interpreting texts, thematizing, and developing thematic structure. Rounding out discussion of the research procedures is a full chapter devoted to writing the research report. The book concludes with a section answering common questions about this style of phenomenological research."
- Qualitative Literacy byCall Number: GN346 .S58 2022ISBN: 9780520390652Publication Date: 2022-08-23Each of the hundreds of ethnographic and interview studies published yearly [on these issues] is scientifically either sound or unsound. This guide provides social scientists, researchers, students, evaluators, policy makers, and journalists with the tools needed to identify and evaluate quality in field research.
- Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector's Field Guide"This how-to guide covers the mechanics of data collection for applied qualitative research. It is appropriate for novice and experienced researchers alike. It can be used as both a training tool and a daily reference manual for field team members. The question and answer format and modular design make it easy for readers to find information on a particular topic quickly."
- Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography byCall Number: GF 21 .Q83 2016 (Bizzell Reserves, National Weather Center stacks)ISBN: 9780199010905Publication Date: 2016"Using a unique "how-to" approach to focus on the practical application of research in human geography by providing real-world examples of research methods at work in case studies, this fourth edition teaches students how to plan, execute, interpret, and effectively communicate qualitative research."
- Qualitative Geography byCall Number: Available onlineISBN: 9781412919913Publication Date: 2009"Shows how empirical details of qualitative research can be linked to the broader social, theoretical, political, and policy concerns of qualitative geographers and the communities within which they work."
- Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences byCall Number: H 61 .B4715 2007ISBN: 0205482635Publication Date: 2006"The author's central purpose is to show inexperienced researchers how to design, collect, and analyze data and then present their results to the scientific community, while stressing the importance of ethics in research and taking the time to properly design and think through any research endeavor."
- The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research byCall Number: H 62 .H2455 2005ISBN: 0761927573Publication Date: 2005"A text for any researcher interested in the art, science and practice of qualitative research."
- Qualitative Data byCall Number: BF 76.5 .A95 2003 (Also available online)ISBN: 0814706940Publication Date: 2003"Meant for the novice researcher who needs guidance on what specifically to do when faced with a sea of information. It takes readers through the qualitative research process, beginning with an examination of the basic philosophy of qualitative research, and ending with planning and carrying out a qualitative research study."