week4 rsponse 2 400

Brandon Labbree  

2 posts

Picking Data Sources (Optional, but could count for Participation credit)

Suppose Dr. Deb Jacques is trying to find data on a country level in Arizona for the percentage of people undergoing treatment for substance abuse over the last few years.

She has found two sources that she needs to decide between that have compatible data regarding the unit of analysis and time.

The first is from the Arizona Institute of Drug Treatment, a governmental agency that oversees drug treatment centers across the state. They collect the data from the standardized admission forms that all incoming patients fill out.

The second is the Homeless Voice Project, which collects the life stories of various people experiencing that its founder, Mary Frey, meets during her travels across the state. During the unstructured interviews that she has with these individuals, they will tell her that they are either currently or previously abused substances.

How should Dr. Jacques pick which source to use, as she can only use one? What are some things that she needs to consider about the underlying data?

Re: Topic 4 DQ 1

Good Afternoon, 

Ensuring that your research is compatible with existing surveys is a way to ensure that the data you are using is within the limits of your reporting. The important things to keep in mind include �They were all collected in the same year. �They were all collected for the same geographic locations. �They refer to data collected at the same level (individual, city, county, state, or nation) (Gordon, 2019).

This could be explained with the example of a study regarding abuse in senior care facilities based on gender and race. You have collected data from 2020 on abuse within care facilities focusing on women, data from 2018 on facilites with abuse on different races. These two studies do not align and status may have changed within those years, it is imperitive to approach your report with statistics that align properly. 

Kandice 

Gordon, L. E. (2019). Real research: Research methods sociology students can use (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.