Resources for Students & Researchers

Here is a list of resources I hope you may find helpful.

For My Students

• Getting a letter of recommendation
• Advice from a college professor
• The Hidden Curriculum in Grad School

Learning Resources

Quantitative Skills

• Introduction to Data Analysis & Visualization using Stata - introduction to Stata, including reference guides
• OpenIntro Statistics - free, comprehensive textbook on statistics and data analysis
• Percentage Change vs. Percentage Point Change - a key distinction for writing and interpreting statistics

Writing Skills

• "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars Over Usage" - by David Foster Wallace; part of my purpose as a teacher is to help you learn Standard Written English as a foreign dialect
• The best questions about writing on Quora

Reproducibility & Transparency in Research

• The Workflow of Data Analysis Using Stata - by J. Scott Long; every social scientist using Stata needs to read this book
• Manual of Best Practices for Transparent Social Science Research - by Garret Christensen, BITSS
• Research Transparency Online Course - YouTube Course created by the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences
• GitHub Guides - guides to learn how to use GitHub, software to make version control easier and more efficient
• Equator Network - reporting guidelines for writing up research (or see APA reporting guidelines for psychology for a closely allied field)

Data Resources

The lists of datasets and data repositories can help provide a starting point for finding data for a research paper or project. I have used those with a * extensively in my own research and so may be able to assist students with questions about them.

Lists of Datasets / Repositories

• ICPSR* - huge data repository with wide variety of datasets available
• Data.gov* - U.S. Government's open data repository
• Harvard Dataverse - data from all disciplines; also, a repository for replication datasets
• Pew* - Pew makes its high-quality, nationally representative data on a variety of topics publicly available
• UCLA Social Science Data Archive
• NBER Data - economic-related data
• Demographic and Health Program Surveys - population, health, HIV, nutrition; over 300 surveys in 90 countries
• ED Data Inventory - list of education-related datasets from the Department of Education
• SF OpenData - hundreds of San Francisco city datasets
• Dataquest - blog post listing a number of great data resources

Panel Data

Panel data from U.S. nationally representative samples on a variety of topics

• RAND American Life Panel - beginning in 2007
• USC Understanding America Study* - beginning in 2014
• GfK KnowledgePanel and NORC AmeriSpeak are also representative panels, but they do not freely share resultant data. You can, however, use their services to field your own survey.
• Pew American Trends Panel - just started in 2014, sharing some limited data (look at individual reports)

Specific Datasets

These datasets are generally respected and widely used.

• General Social Survey* - ongoing, nationally representative survey of U.S. life since 1972
• IPUMS - U.S. Census data
• IHIS* - U.S. Nationally representative survey related to health
• Add Health - longitudinal study of health from adolescence to adulthood, includes network, educational, and biometric data
• NLS (including NLSY) - National Longitudinal Surveys, looking at important life events and labor market outcomes
• HINTS* - Health Information National Trends Survey
• PIAAC - Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, assesses cognitive and workplace skills

Odds & Ends

Sociology as Profession

• The importance of stupidity in scientific research (JCS)
• On Being a Scientist (PNAS) - Much of the tacit knowledge of the scientific professions made explicit; though the article is over two decades old, still quite true. Aside from the section on "Scientific Progress," I largely agree, and think this a valuable resource for students starting out in grad school or undergrads considering a career in academic research.

Other Helpful Pieces

Things I have found helpful throughout my work-life.

• Two sides of the coin: how to do what you love; the ethics of needing to love what you do
• Perspective