Research Guides: Research Data Services: Research Tutorials

Online Research Tools

Researchers may find the following tools useful in their work. Emphasis is given to free (or at least having free components) and online tools or services.

Electronic Lab Notebooks:

ELN at Harvard Medical School - The Electronic Lab Notebook Matrix has been created to aid researchers in the process of identifying a usable Electronic Lab Notebook solutions to meet their specific research needs. Through this resource, researchers can compare and contrast the numerous solutions available today, and also explore individual options in-depth.
RSpace - An ELN for researchers to organize, manage and collaborate on their projects.
Docollab - Project management system, collaboration.
Benchling - Life Sciences focused experiment, lab and project management.

Data Analysis/Visualization:

TableauPublic - Free version of their desktop and online data visualization platform. All data uploaded to TableauPublic is available to everyone on the Internet. The paid versions allow restricted access.
StatCrunch - Simple online data analysis and survey package.
Dataviz - Data visualization for time, geographic and comparative data.
OpenRefine - Data cleaning and exploration tool.

Directories of Research Tools:

Research Tutorials

Data Training

Introduction

Welcome to the Research Data Training series! These training modules aim to help you think about how to work with your data in a methodical, efficient manner. We recommend that you first watch all the videos in order, then come back to each when you need a refresher.These modules assume that you have had some experience with data such as through an introductory research methods or statistics course. If you are new to research data, then we suggest you watch An Introduction to the Basics of Research Data.

We welcome your comments and suggestions for improving these modules, as well as suggestions for other topics. You can email us at datasvcs@syr.edu .

Planning Your Research

This is the first module of the Research Data Training Series. In this module we discuss how to plan your research project.

Supplementary Materials:

Open Science Framework - An open-source project management and collaboration tool.
MANTRA - "is a free, online non-assessed course with guidelines to help you understand and reflect on how to manage the data you collect throughout your research".
Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving - Though this says "Social Science," it is applicable to all fields.

Working With Variables

In this module we discuss techniques of working with variables- naming and labelling them, dealing with missing data, recoding variables and other information necessary to properly define and manipulate your data.

Supplementary Materials

SAS
Stata
SPSS

Documenting Your Research

In this module we discuss why you should document your research and what you should document.,

Supplementary Materials:

Data Documentation Initiative - A metadata specification for the social and behavioral sciences.
File Naming Conventions - Guidelines for naming folder and files
MANTRA - "is a free, online non-assessed course with guidelines to help you understand and reflect on how to manage the data you collect throughout your research".

Open Science Framework - An open-source project management and collaboration tool.

Collecting Your Data

In this module we discuss strategies for paper-based and electronic data collection, data entry and using secondary data.

Supplementary Materials:

Guide to Data Collection and File Creation - Part of the Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving from ICPSR
Processing Data - One of the Sage Publications "little green books"

Cleaning Your Data

In this module we will learn what to look for when cleaning your data and how to fix problems.

Supplementary Materials

Survey Data Cleaning Guidelines - Detailed working paper on the steps of preparing data for analysis
The Quartz Guide to Bad Data - An exhaustive reference to problems seen in real-world data along with suggestions on how to resolve them.

Analyzing Your Data

In this final module we discuss the steps in analyzing your data: creating new variables, describing your data and, of course, doing the analysis.

Supplementary Materials:

SAS
Stata
SPSS