INFO 747 Social and Economic Data

The course is designed to teach the student all the basics required to acquire and transform raw information into social and economic data. Legal, statistical, computing, and social science aspects of the data “production” process will be treated. Major emphasis will be placed on U.S. Census data that are accessible from the Census Bureau’s Research Data Center network. This version of the course has been specially prepared for graduate students who are planning to use RDC-based data or are seriously considering it. Students will be introduced to the new NSF-sponsored Virtual Research Data Center.
Core topics include:

  • Basic statistical principles of populations and sampling frames
  • Acquiring data via samples, censuses, administrative records, and transaction logging
  • Law, economics and statistics of data privacy and confidentiality protection
  • Data linking and integration techniques (probabilistic record linking; multivariate statistical matching)
  • Data imputation techniques
  • Analytic methods for complex linked data sets

More information is available on the dedicated INFO 747 subsite, here on the VirtualRDC.