Would that warning against using others data apply to data archived here?
http://www.policyagendas.org/page/datasets-codebooks
I'm kidding on the square. The caution against simply using existing
data is warranted, but it can be taken too far. At some point most of
us have to rely on someone else for our data. I can get roll call
data from the 111th Congress, but that data set probably used some
documents compiled by the Clerk of the House of Representatives. I
can get aggregate public opinion data, but those marginals are often
reported by the polling house. Even if you had the data from the
survey, we shouldn't demand that researchers see the original paper
(for old surveys) or recordings of each interview to double-check the
accuracy of the survey coding. And we could further argue about
whether we should use research assistants.
Tobin
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:25 AM, Bryan Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Colleagues
>
> I want to add a strong second to Charles Stewart's old grump caveat. He
> only thinks he is a grump about data quality! I am the Grand Grump.
> Grabbing someone else's numbers and running analyses on them should no
> longer be acceptable in political science (anywhere else, for that matter).
> A little care in data quality can yield strong benefits in improved test
> power. But as Soroka, Wlezien, and McLeana show, error in data can also
> lead one to reject a null inappropriately.
>
> It is a great piece that shows how error in data can cause all sorts of
> bad stuff, and should be required reading in research design courses.
> Stuart Soroka, Christopher Wlezien, and Iain McLean. 2005. How Measures
> Matter. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society A 169 Part 2: 255-71.
>
>
> On Jan 8, 2011, at 8:57 AM, Charles Stewart III wrote:
>
>> At the risk of seeming like an old grump, could I step back and fret a bit
>> about data quality that this thread has left by the side of the road?
>>
>> Election return data at the local is surprisingly difficult to acquire,
>> even in this electronic age. It requires a certain persistence that has to
>> be learned and trained. Learning to be persistent is difficult in these
>> days when we teach our students that if they know how to ask, there's
>> already an Excel spreadsheet available with the data they need.
>>
>> In the United States, all local jurisdictions must eventually report their
>> canvassed returns to the state election officer, which then publishes them.
>> All states publish returns at the level of reporting, usually the county.
>> Most of these reports are on the web, in a variety of formats, which now
>> can easily (if tediously) be manipulated with software that is now
>> essentially free --- by which I mean Excel and Adobe's pdf reader. I know
>> this from personal experience, constructing datasets of turnout and vote
>> totals for presidential elections at the county and town level each year
>> since 2000. While I have purchased some software to speed up the process,
>> like able2extract and ocr programs, it's still the case that every format
>> I've seen from a state can be manipulated with one of these programs, with a
>> little hand-entry thrown in from time-to-time.
>>
>> We have a great debt to pay to news organizations and web sites that
>> gather this data for us and post it up on their sites for our use. In the
>> days immediately following elections, these sites --- NY Times, CNN, etc,
>> --- are often the only practical sources for scholars to use, if they want
>> to be involved in the evolving story about the election. (In other words,
>> if you want to talk to reporters or wrote blogs, you often need to use these
>> sites.) These sites are often just mirroring the AP operation, which is an
>> extraordinary operation. HOWEVER, AP is not a scholarly operation. That's
>> where my concern lies.
>>
>> States take a long time to certify their election returns and release the
>> final results, accounted for at the local level --- sometimes taking months
>> to do so. (In 2008, for instance, Massachusetts did not make available its
>> town-level returns, even if you asked really nice, until April 2009.) AP
>> will eventually mop up their data set, so that it reflects these certified
>> returns. However, I strongly suspect that the abandoned datasets sitting
>> around on the CNN and NYT web sites are not updated, and so reflect all
>> sorts of omissions, such as provisional and absentee ballots in many states.
>>
>> As an example, compare the results at the NYT site for California
>> (http://elections.nytimes.com/2010/results/california) with the California
>> statement of vote
>> (http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/sov/2010-general/complete-sov.pdf). The
>> New York Times data is missing 1.6 million votes, or roughly 16% of the
>> votes cast for senator. That's because the NYT data ceased to be updated as
>> California completed its count.
>>
>> I think it is generally a very bad idea to encourage graduate students to
>> purchase datasets like this, or to rely on news web sites, but if there is
>> one web site that bears watching, it's Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S.
>> Presidential Elections, since the data are usually based on official returns
>> and, if you dig deeply enough, he reports his data sources. I've purchased
>> data from his site, have cross-checked it with my own efforts, and found it
>> very good.
>>
>> In conclusion, I hope we can make a distinction between the fast-and-dirty
>> analysis we do on the fly, because we're trying to make sense of unfolding
>> election counts or trying to gin-up an example for class, and the scholarly
>> analysis we do. If the former, then the newspaper web sites are fine, and
>> even indispensible. If the latter, we have a duty to be careful about
>> provenance.
>>
>> Charles
>>
>> ===============================================================
>> Charles Stewart III
>> Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science
>> Housemaster of McCormick Hall
>>
>> Voice: 617.253.3127 / Facsimile: 617.258.8546
>> e-mail: [log in to unmask] / URL: http://web.mit.edu/cstewart/www/
>>
>> Department of Political Science
>> 30 Wadsworth Street
>> Building E53-449
>> Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Political Methodology Society [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>> Behalf Of John Henderson
>> Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 7:34 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: [POLMETH] 2010 Senate Elections results
>>
>> I don't believe so. Here's the full API list:
>> http://developer.nytimes.com/docs
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 10:31 AM, Simon Jackman <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Are these data part of what NYTimes exposes via it's API?
>>>
>>> Simon Jackman
>>> Dept of Political Science and, by courtesy, Statistics,
>>> Stanford University, Stanford CA 94305-6044
>>> http://jackman.Stanford.edu
>>>
>>> On Jan 7, 2011, at 8:41 AM, John Henderson <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> For a licensing fee, you can purchase the county data here:
>>>> http://www.uselectionatlas.org/BOTTOM/store_data.php.
>>>>
>>>> For free, you can access county data on the nytimes webpage, but you'll
>>>
>>> have
>>>>
>>>> to enter the data by hand using their graphical interface:
>>>> http://elections.nytimes.com/2010/results/senate. Maybe you could get
>>>
>>> the
>>>>
>>>> data from the nytimes via email however?
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>> John
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 1:20 AM, Inaki Sagarzazu <
>>>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>
>>>>> I was trying to find the county level results for the 2010 senate
>>>
>>> elections
>>>>>
>>>>> and it has proven a little difficult. Does anybody have any suggestions
>>>
>>> as
>>>>>
>>>>> to where can these results be found?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks in advance
>>>>>
>>>>> Iñaki
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>
>>>>> Iñaki Sagarzazu
>>>>> Research Officer
>>>>> Nuffield College
>>>>> University of Oxford
>>>>> OX1 1NF Oxford
>>>>> United Kingdom
>>>>>
>>>>> Office: 44 (0) 1 865 614990
>>>>> [log in to unmask]<mailto:
>>>
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/users/sagarzazu/index.html
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> **********************************************************
>>>>> Political Methodology E-Mail List
>>>>> Editors: Diana O'Brien <[log in to unmask]>
>>>>> Jon C. Rogowski <[log in to unmask]>
>>>>> **********************************************************
>>>>> Send messages to [log in to unmask]
>>>>> To join the list, cancel your subscription, or modify
>>>>> your subscription settings visit:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://polmeth.wustl.edu/polmeth.php
>>>>>
>>>>> **********************************************************
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> **********************************************************
>>>> Political Methodology E-Mail List
>>>> Editors: Diana O'Brien <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> Jon C. Rogowski <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> **********************************************************
>>>> Send messages to [log in to unmask]
>>>> To join the list, cancel your subscription, or modify
>>>> your subscription settings visit:
>>>>
>>>> http://polmeth.wustl.edu/polmeth.php
>>>>
>>>> **********************************************************
>>>
>>> **********************************************************
>>> Political Methodology E-Mail List
>>> Editors: Diana O'Brien <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Jon C. Rogowski <[log in to unmask]>
>>> **********************************************************
>>> Send messages to [log in to unmask]
>>> To join the list, cancel your subscription, or modify
>>> your subscription settings visit:
>>>
>>> http://polmeth.wustl.edu/polmeth.php
>>>
>>> **********************************************************
>>>
>>
>> **********************************************************
>> Political Methodology E-Mail List
>> Editors: Diana O'Brien <[log in to unmask]>
>> Jon C. Rogowski <[log in to unmask]>
>> **********************************************************
>> Send messages to [log in to unmask]
>> To join the list, cancel your subscription, or modify
>> your subscription settings visit:
>>
>> http://polmeth.wustl.edu/polmeth.php
>>
>> **********************************************************
>>
>> **********************************************************
>> Political Methodology E-Mail List
>> Editors: Diana O'Brien <[log in to unmask]>
>> Jon C. Rogowski <[log in to unmask]>
>> **********************************************************
>> Send messages to [log in to unmask]
>> To join the list, cancel your subscription, or modify
>> your subscription settings visit:
>>
>> http://polmeth.wustl.edu/polmeth.php
>>
>> **********************************************************
>
> Bryan D. Jones
> JJ Pickle Chair of Congressional Studies
> Department of Government
> University of Texas at Austin
> Austin, TX 78712
> Office: 512-471-9973
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
>
> **********************************************************
> Political Methodology E-Mail List
> Editors: Diana O'Brien <[log in to unmask]>
> Jon C. Rogowski <[log in to unmask]>
> **********************************************************
> Send messages to [log in to unmask]
> To join the list, cancel your subscription, or modify
> your subscription settings visit:
>
> http://polmeth.wustl.edu/polmeth.php
>
> **********************************************************
>
**********************************************************
Political Methodology E-Mail List
Editors: Diana O'Brien <[log in to unmask]>
Jon C. Rogowski <[log in to unmask]>
**********************************************************
Send messages to [log in to unmask]
To join the list, cancel your subscription, or modify
your subscription settings visit:
http://polmeth.wustl.edu/polmeth.php
**********************************************************
|
