Data Assignment
Purpose
After completing this assignment, students will have selected a paper topic and determined that adequate data is available for the variable they have selected to analyze in their final paper.
What to Do
For this assignment, you will select one topic for your paper. Visit the World Development Indicators Databank, and select an indicator of interest to you1. For this variable, select all countries and available years of data and download them for use in Excel, Sheets, or an equivalent spreadsheet program. After doing this, find one scholarly citation that discuss the particular variable you have chosen.
The variable you select should:
- Have Adequate Country “Coverage”: International data collection processes are
never perfect or complete and there is always missing data for some countries and at some points in time. A viable project needs a sufficiently large sample of data across countries to describe and explain cross-national patterns. Ideally, your variable will have data for the majority of the world’s countries, or when appropriate near complete coverage for a particular world region. Note that some major measures of global poverty (e.g. the $1.90 a day poverty rate) do not have data for the advanced capitalist countries of the West. Such measures are still acceptable as they have wide coverage for the countries that are the common focus of development research.
Data Assignment
- Have Adequate Time “Coverage”: International statistical data is always collected with some delay and gaps in time are not uncommon. Ideally, your data will be collected over a reasonable number of years and will be available reasonably recently (within the past 5 years). In terms of over time coverage, gaps in the years are less important than the total range of coverage. In other words, having data from only the years 2000 and 2020 is better than having 5 years of data from 2015 to 2020.
- Be Important and Interesting to You and Others: There is a lot of data out there. Select a variable that you think is interesting and worth exploring. What could you study and discuss that will be worth the hours you are going to spend doing it?
- Not be Overly Broad: There are a number of broad economic and demographic variables that are off limits. Variables like GDP, Population, Unemployment, etc. are covered extensively in class and will not make good projects. Narrower variables that have a story to tell are better.
2)Next create a map of your chosen variable like the example below, using Datawrapper. To do this, you will need your data in a Spreadsheet program like Excel or Sheets formatted with each row representing a country and the column representing the year of the data you would like to map. The map below is of the world, but it is possible that for your project a more regional map might be more appropriate (e.g. a map of Europe or Latin America). Note that the map needs to have a legend, title, citation, and appropriate color scheme. If you feel like experimenting and learning by doing, jump on the website and play.
- A discussion of the map, which includes:
- A brief description of the data itself and where you found it.
- A discussion of what the map shows about the variable. Nothing is obvious.
After looking at this map, what do you want the reader to get from it?
- A total of 4 citations
Note: This is a point for you to reality-check your project. If while drawing the map, you discover that the data is really spotty, there isn’t really any interesting variation, the variable confuses or bores you, or it just doesn’t make sense for IPE, then now is a good time to change your topic.
Data Assignment
Visualizing Distributions
Purpose
This assignment is designed to help you to graph your data in order to help make sense of the variable you have chosen for the paper. These visualizations should be a significant part of your final paper project.
What to Do
3) You will create two graphs that provide a visual demonstration of how your variable is distributed across countries, world regions, or time. There are many possible graphs you could draw, and which ones make sense for your project depends on what your variable is and on what your paper will focus. I recommend you do some reading on your topic before you dive into this assignment; the more informed you are about your topic, the easier it will be for you to decide what types of graphs might be the most useful to see. I also, strongly recommend you consider drawing a bunch of different graphs, taking time to look at each one and think about what it means and what other graphs you might draw. The more curious you are about what your data says and the more willing you are to play around the more interesting things you will find. Finding interesting things makes your paper better, makes you better, and is fun.
Data Assignment
Whatever graphs you choose to make, always remember to give them a title, label axes appropriately, make sure they make sense, and try to make the meaning of the graph as clear as possible.
- A brief description of the data itself and where you found it.
- A discussion of what the graph shows about the variable. Nothing is
obvious. After looking at this graph, what do you want the reader to get from it? If the answer is “nothing,” then you drew a bad graph! Draw another one until you find something interesting to say.
Visualizing Distributions
Purpose
This assignment is designed to help you think about the relationships between your variable of interest and other variables. These other variables may be related to your variable of interest as important causes, consequences, or comparisons. What the right variables are and how to visualize them will vary by project and is a choice for you to make.
What to Do
4)you will create at least two graphs that provide a visual demonstration of how your variable relates to another variable or set of variables. As with Assignment 3, there are many additional variables you could look at and many more graphs you could draw to look at them. Commonly, this might be a variable that you believe is a cause of your variable. It might also be a variable you think is a consequence of your variable. Sometimes the comparison might be of two variables that are interesting to compare.
Data Assignment
For example, in my remittances work I might look at:
- Per Capita GDP and Remittances to see if levels of development shape the levels of remittances.
- LevelsofMigrationandRemittancestoseeifremittancesincreaseinsocietieswithhighlevelsof
outward migration.
- ForeignAidandRemittancestocomparehowremittances(aninformalformofredistribution
from richer to poorer countries) compares to more formal forms of development assistance. Rather than a causal story, this comparison might help to place remittances into a larger story about ways in which money flows from richer to poorer countries. This might be useful if I am for example looking at the role of migration in offsetting global inequalities.
Whatever graphs you choose to make, always remember to give them a title, label axes appropriately, make sure they make sense and try to make the graph’s meaning as clear as possible. If you are feeling lost, you probably should stop and do some serious reading about your topic. Reading more will make it much easier to identify important variables you could look at and how they might be related to your variable of interest. APA.
