This guide will help you discovery and evaluate sources.
The presentation slides are available. The slides cover the general concepts about finding and evaluating data. (Be sure to view the Speaker Notes.) This research guide points to specific resources available through the library or publicly.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out!
Unlike Many other disciplines, Math and Statistics don't have a single citation style in publications. However, we recommend you use APA citation style. We recommend using a citation generator to create accurate citations you can copy into your paper. You will have an in-text citation in your paper where you reference your website/journal/data source/etc. At the end of your paper you will have a "References" section where you will have the full citation.
Example-
In-text citation:
"Role-play can help children learn techniques for coping with bullying" (Kraiser, 2011)
Reference Entry:
Kraizer, S. (2011). Preventing bullying. Retrieved from http://safechild.org/categoryparents/preventing-bullying/
These are data sources available to you through UVA Library. They cover a broad range of topics.
For those of you using the US Census, you might want to check out these resources:
Also see News sources’ GitHub repos: NYTimes, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, etc.
Every empirical academic paper is going to have a methods section. Look for articles similar to a topic you are interested in, and check the methods section. What data are they using?
Here is a real-life example. A group of students asked Jenn about Major League Baseball injuries, and she found this: Injury Rates in Major League Baseball During the 2020 COVID-19 Season. The very first line of the Methods section states, “Data from the 2018-2020 MLB transaction reports were extracted online at mlb.com/transactions.”
Start in one place and keep iterating. Use the first place to see if sources are cited, and work from there.
Statista is a great place to try this strategy. Statista only offers basic statistics (tables and charts, not full datasets). However, they always cite their sources. Keep digging at the source to see if you can find an original dataset. You can use the same strategy with PolicyMap as well.