As part of its mission, QDR promotes the pedagogical use of published qualitative and multi-method data projects. Shared qualitative data can play a crucial role for both substantive and methods teaching. Below is a non-exhaustive list of projects we want to highlight as being particularly well-suited for secondary uses by undergraduate and graduate students. They all
- Allow unrestricted access to data after registration
- Are well documented so data are understandable
- Are rich in content to allow deep engagement and the pursuit of a variety of questions
- Are mostly in English for widest usability.
The projects are listed by data type and include a short description. For additional details, simply click through to the project page in our data catalog.
If you use any of these data projects in your class, we’d love to hear about it: please email us at qdr@syr.edu.
Historical and/or Archival Data
Hale, Thomas. 2016. "Between interests and law: The politics of transnational commercial disputes". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F6C8276H.
A significant collection of archival materials alongside a smaller number of interviews and some quantitative data. The data supplement the depositor’s 2015 monograph of the same title.
Loyle, Cyanne E.; Davenport, Christian; Sullivan, Christopher. 2018. "Association for Legal Justice (ALJ) Human Rights Testimony, Northern Ireland". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F6LHMHJR.
A massive collection of “human right reports,” filed by citizens after encounters with the police. Some handwritten, some typed, these are rich, raw data.
Trachtenberg, Marc. 2020. “The Trachtenberg Papers.” https://data.qdr.syr.edu/dataverse/trachtenberg
Several thousand archival documents as well as pedagogical materials by the eminent scholar of cold-war diplomacy. The materials supplement his book Constructed Peace, and provide a rich source of historical data beyond that.
Case Reports or Qualitative Coding
Mainwaring, Scott; Pérez-Liñán, Aníbal. 2015. "Democracies and dictatorships in Latin America: Political actors, 1944-2010". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F65Q4T1P.
Twenty country reports of Latin American countries, each containing brief case studies on hundreds of political actors and their preferences, including the assigned (quantitative) codes, supplementing the authors’ 2013 Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America.
Zagare, Frank. 2018. "The Deterrence Project". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F6AJE0NP.
Various materials, most notably 16 book-length case studies, underlying Snyder and Diesing’s seminal 1977 book, Conflict Among Nations: Bargaining, Decision Making, and System Structure in International Crises.
Interview and Focus Group Data
Chukwuma, Adanna. 2017. "A qualitative study of perspectives on postnatal care referrals by Traditional Birth Attendants in Ebonyi State, Nigeria". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F67H1GGS
A well documented small focus group study. The data supplement a published article. (Subject: Public Health)
Jones, Kristal. 2020. "Seed systems in West Africa". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F6URYY1I
Several hundred transcripts from individual interviews and focus groups, as well as extensive documentation, from Jones’s dissertation fieldwork. (Subject: Agricultural and Development Studies)
Madrid, Raúl. 2016. "The rise of ethnic politics in Latin America". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F6MS3QNV.
Notes and transcripts from on-the-record interviews with almost 50 Latin American political actors related to indigenous parties and power in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, supplementing the author’s 2013 book of the same title. (Subject: Political Science)
O'Neill, Maureen. 2017. "High performance school-age athletes at Australian schools: A study of conflicting demands". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F6ZP448B
Interviews (39) with school-age athletes, their parents, and teachers, as well as detailed materials related to their analysis in the NVivo QDAs software. (Subject: Education)
Multi-method Data
Hitt, Matthew. 2019. "Replication Data for: Inconsistency and Indecision in the United States Supreme Court". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F6W7QRSX
Extensive archival data from the papers of US Supreme Court justices, sorted by case, as well as statistical data and Stata analysis code supplementing the author’s book of the same name.
Holland, Alisha. 2019. "Data for: Forbearance as redistribution: The politics of informal welfare in Latin America". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F626JGPB.
Selected interview transcripts, newspaper coverage, and quantitative data on the politics of informality in Latin America, supplementing the author’s book of the same title.
Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (Research Transparency)
Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI) is an approach to transparency in qualitative research developed by QDR and based on Andrew Moravcsik’s earlier work on active citations. ATI projects are ideal to give students a look at authors’ use of evidence (see e.g. our blogpost on Robert Adcock’s lesson on historical methods using ATI). QDR has a growing number of articles from various disciplines; here some examples:
Musgrave, Paul. 2018. "Data for: Defending hierarchy from the Moon to the Indian Ocean: Symbolic capital and political dominance in early modern China and the Cold War". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F6NNOI5C.
The ATI annotations in this historical piece provide in-depth information mainly on the use of secondary sources.
O'Mahoney, Joseph. 2018. "Data for: Making the real: Rhetorical adduction and the Bangladesh Liberation War". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F6M2H9VQ.
O’Mahoney relies heavily on archival material in his case study and details its use (and makes available the primary sources) through his annotations.
Saunders, Elizabeth. 2015. "Data for: “John F. Kennedy,” in: Leaders at war: How presidents shape military interventions". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F68G8HMM
Saunders provides access to and excerpts from the primary materials used in her chapter on the evolution of JFK’s foreign policy views.
Large Corpora (e.g. for Automated Analysis)
A small subset of QDR’s collections has large data in formats that allow for easy machine readability and “text as data” analyses.
Elkins, Zachary; Ginsburg, Tom; Melton, James. 2018. "Constitute: Constitutional text for scholars and drafters". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F6TD9V7G
The English text of more than 200 constitutions, coded based on a standardized ontology and available as linked data XML (.nt) files.
Goertz, Gary; Powers, Kathy. 2019. "Data for: Regional governance: The evolution of a new institutional form". Qualitative Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.5064/F6UHXBNH
The text of several thousand agreements underlying regional economic institutions available in plain text (.txt) or PDF format.