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Define Unit of Analysis

What unit of coverage is required?

Individual Level, Institutional Level, Production Unit level data or other?

What time frame or frequency will support your analysis?

Cross sectional: collected at the same point of time for several individuals.

Longitudinal/Panel: Data collected at a sequence of time points for each of a sample of individuals.

Pooled cross sectional time series: mixture of time series data and cross-section data

Time Series:
series of measurements over time, usually at regular intervals

Frequency: Monthly/Quarterly/Annual

What Geographic unit address the scope of your research?

Local, national, international?


 
 

 
First Steps

Define Topic

Be as specific as possible when defining your topic. Identify key concepts and scope including unit of measure, time frame, frequency and geographic coverage. Then search key literature in your field. A good place to start is other dissertations and bibliographic databases in your field. Meet with your Subject Specialist Librarian to identify bibliographic database or browse Online Databases by Category.


Literature Survey

Use articles and book bibliographies to define your topic and identify data sets used by other researchers.

Dissertations and Theses - Full Text (ProQuest) (BC Community Only)
Search citations and abstracts to more than 2 million dissertations and masters theses in all fields produced in North American colleges and universities from 1861 to the present, and from around the world since 1988.

ICPSR (BC Community Only)– Search database of data-related articles with links to the study used for the research.

Online Databases by Category.

 

 

IF YOU CAN'T FIND THE DATA YOU NEED CONTACT DATASUPPORT@BC.EDU


 
 

Subject Guide

Barbara Mento

Contact Info:
O'Neill 313
617-552-3354
Email Me
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My Subjects:
Economics, Computer Science, Mathematics, Data/Statistics, GIS

 
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