DOI: 10.3886/icpsr38841.v1
title: Teaching with Data in the Social Sciences, St. Louis, Missouri, 2020-2021
title: Version 1

description: The Ithaka S+R study Teaching with Data in the Social Sciences (TDSS) built on Ithaka's S+R's ongoing research program to investigate teaching practices and support needs across multiple disciplines within higher education. The goals were to understand teaching of foundational skills necessary for success in a data-driven world; how to help students achieve data literacy; how to facilitate finding datasets; and identifying tools to help students manipulate, understand, and visualize data. Twenty institutions contributed to the overall project. This collection contains project data from Washington University in St. Louis. The university research team conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 instructors who, at the time of study, taught with data to undergraduates in the social sciences (Anthropology, Psychology, Political Science, Sociology, History, Business, Economics).
description: The purpose of this study was to investigate teaching practices and support needs of social sciences instructors who incorporate work with quantitative data into undergraduate-level courses.
description: Ithaka S+R Teaching with Data in the Social Sciences (TDSS) project leaders provided the protocol and semi-structured interview guide to each university involved in the project to use in data collection. Individual interviews were conducted virtually via Zoom, with most lasting less than 60 minutes. Transcripts were extracted from Zoom, corrected in comparison with the recording, de-identified, and reviewed by the research team prior to analyses. Using a grounded theory approach, the local research team identified primary and sub-themes that emerged from an initial sample of transcripts. Each team member then claimed a primary theme to code in all transcripts, using either Atlas.ti or NVivo for coding.
description: Questions for participants focused on four main topics: Background experience in teaching undergraduates How students obtain data for classroom use: processes they use to search for datasets, generate their own datasets, or accessing instructor-provided data, including any challenges How students work with data: tools/software used, prerequisite knowledge required, knowledge explicitly taught by the instructor, teaching with data to meet discipline-specific goals and pedagogy, ethical challenges Training and support: sources of support from others in obtaining or working with data, extracurricular learning opportunities for students, training outside of instructor's formal degree, types of training/assistance that would be beneficial
description: The local team at Washington University in St. Louis contacted key stakeholders on campus who worked in the social sciences to identify possible interview participants. Thirty-seven potential candidates were identified, then a list was created of fifteen instructors who best fit the desired candidate profile. Thirteen agreed to be interviewed.
description: Datasets: DS1: Teaching with Data in the Social Sciences, St. Louis, Missouri, 2020-2021
description: Social science instructors teaching with quantitative data in undergraduate-level courses at the study site.
description: face-to-face interviewThis study is part of the Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) Qualitative Data Sharing (QDS) project.ICPSR has zipped the 13 interview transcripts in a qualitative data package, which is available for restricted download.Please refer to the study report for the interview guide (Appendix A).For more information on Ithaka S+R, please visit the organization's website.