Data Literacy for the Social Sciences: Home

Data Literacy

Welcome to the Data Literacy for the Social Sciences Research Guide.

What is data literacy? Data literacy depends on a variety of skills and knowledge and is "the ability to read, work with, analyze and argue with data as part of a larger inquiry process."(1)

Data literacy doesn’t mean an individual is an expert—as a data scientist or analyst might be—but rather, that they show an understanding of basic skills, such as the ability to:

• Select and clean different types of data
• Clean data and manage data hygiene
• Interpret and critique data using various types of analysis, tools and models
• Visualize and communicate stories using data

This guide is organized to help students develop these skills for social science research.

(1) D’Ignazio & Bhargava, 2016 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/10d6/75d5d714e29ab21084b84b18f03be474c278.pdf