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Pt1420 Unit 3

Decent Essays

Identifying appropriate data sources to answer demographic information questions is challenging. While the widespread availability of existing data provides an opportunity for answering demographic information questions without the high expense associated with primary data collection, the data source must be chosen carefully to ensure that it can address the study question, that it has a sufficient number of observations, that key variables are available, there is an adequate confounder control and a sufficient length of the follow-up.
Primary data are collected expressly for research. Observational studies, meaning studies with no dictated intervention, require the collection of new data if there is no adequate existing data for testing …show more content…

Social media data provide real-time updates on users. Both the population and individual-level scale of these data creates the opportunity to study census that is difficult to assess through traditional means of data collection. And, compared to surveys and other traditional means of data collection, these data are low cost and the process of data collection can be automated. However, there are some limitations regarding the use of these data. For example, similar to traditional data streams, social media data are not always representative of the population of interest. While researchers have proposed methods for minimizing this limitation such as probabilistically adjusting the data to match the population under study - identifying and quantifying Big Data bias is challenging. This is partly due to a lack of demographic indicators such as age, race, and gender. The ability to accurately and reliably detect users’ demographic traits would expand the use of social media as a research tool for social and behavioral sciences and public health. Additionally, linking demographic information to social media data would allow researchers to study disparities and trends in health-related attitudes and

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