We're nudging you to take a little bit of time to review and wrap up your work by focusing on your data documentation.
Documentation content
Documentation should be:
Enough information,
about the project, methods, and materials
such that the information is maintainable over time,
in an accessible format,
and valuable for those who need it.
Two common documentation formats
README files provide basic information about a dataset.
Data Dictionaries/Codebooks provide a detailed description of each element or variable in a dataset.
Ready for some quick documentation?
We like this data documentation README template from Cornell University to get you started. Take just 3 minutes and fill out as much as possible for a project that you consider important (e.g. supports a recent publication, your thesis, a grant application, etc.). If you're on a roll, keep adding more! Your future self will be grateful for your documentation file.
Adapted from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Research Data Services, "Data Nudge: Lightning documentation," CC BY 4.0.
Regression and Other Stories
The authors of Regression and Other Stories (Andrew Gelman, Jennifer Hill, and Aki Vehtari) have released a free PDF version of their book. The authors describe Regression and Other Stories as “a book about how to use regression to solve real problems of comparison, estimation, prediction, and causal inference. It focuses on practical issues such as sample size and missing data and a wide range of goals and techniques. It jumps right in to methods and computer code you can use fresh out of the box.” This PDF is free to view and download for personal use only. Visit the book’s website to download the book, access data used in the book, and see fully worked examples using R.
Follow us on Twitter!
We're tweeting! Follow us on our new twitter account – @uva_data – to hear about what we're doing, learn about new workshops and materials, and see what resources we're excited about.
