Dataset or Research Question: Which comes first?
By: Jaladh Singhal
Tags: Research, Dataset, Data Analysis, Data Science, Data

Like anything in Science (be it of Data), we can figure things out by experimenting, so let’s try sticking to asking a research question first and then finding dataset. Put this dilemma aside for a while, and start cleaning the cobwebs in your mind to search for a forgotten project idea, i.e. a shiny research question to put your data analysis skills in use! It’s okay if your question is vague in the beginning because as per the data analysis process, it is refined only after we dive into dataset. So at this stage, you start thinking:

What should I analyze — it should be definitely something unique? What are those research topics which often pop up in my head and I become curious to find their answers (though I never tried to find them yet, due to my laziness)?

By this time, you’ll get at least a couple of ideas and you’re able to form some unique vague questions from them. Let’s consider what I came up with:

Is there any correlation between the number of tabs open in one’s browser and specific psychological traits? *eyes gleaming with excitement — time has come to get the answer of why I have 50 tabs open right now*

But here’s a catch: Is this question “answerable by data” which is “already present” and is “accessible to you”?

Many may wonder (at least I used to did), we’re living in the age of Big Data & Internet, data is present everywhere and to access it we just need some searching on Google. But in reality, it’s not that simple! Let’s break down why is it so, to the three phrases I’ve quoted above:

1. Answerable by Data?

When you put “data for the number of browser tabs open and psychological traits” in Google search box, you will get a list of articles explaining internet FOMO, multi-tab mania, etc. But notice that they do not present any dataset about the question we have, rather they are themselves answering the question — conclusive reports which discuss possible psychological reasons. So the question we started with does have an answer (partial, though). But what we are looking for is some data that we can analyze to answer it ourselves. Maybe we’re not searching it the right way, let’s try searching directly on the data sources.

2. Accessible to You?

Some of the articles which appeared in our search did mention the results of some research and cited the research paper’s link. But when you click over them, you’ll find that they haven’t made their data accessible to the public — this brings us to the next part. There is another limitation of our unique & vague research question, that the data we’re looking for should be freely available. So you go to the free data sources on the web as enlisted here:

Or search it with Google’s Dataset search engine with “free” filter but unfortunately you still won’t find any relevant dataset for the question we started with.

3. Already present?

At this point, it starts to make sense that maybe no such open access research has been conducted yet that’s why no dataset is present — openly! But is it possible for us to collect it? Sometimes, it is easy to do so by scraping it from multiple webpages or by using an API, thereby preparing a dataset ourselves. Otherwise, you have to conduct a survey to collect data as researchers do. Unfortunately, the research question we started with, falls in the latter category where we will need to involve psychologists to design a survey and then conduct it on web browser users. Not only it is time-consuming but also infeasible unless you’re backed by the R&D department of an organization. Are you?

So what’s the feasible solution? Reverse engineer it! Find a dataset first and then ask the question. But like me, you might be wondering doesn’t it limit the uniqueness we wanted in our research question — this way it will be the same as what others have already done. Well, here’s a subtlety we were missing from the beginning in this way of thinking. If we were searching for a dataset for a unique research question, then the datasets (if present) would be those which someone has collected for their research, i.e. our research question would not have been unique in the first place. It can be entirely unique only when you are the first one to collect the data. But, if you use some accessible dataset, it can still be partially unique because chances are — someone has not asked a question on the dataset which you may come up with!