From secondary data to Population Data Science: remembering 40 years of scientific production within CSP pages

Some researchers gain access to large amounts of data without interacting with a single research participant. Instead, they use existing records to answer various research questions. This type of research approach is known as archival research. Archival research relies on looking at past records or data sets to look for interesting patterns or relationships. For example, a researcher might access the academic records of all individuals who enrolled in college within the past ten years and...

Sometimes we want to see how people change over time, as in studies of human development and lifespan. When we test the same group of individuals repeatedly over an extended period of time, we are conducting longitudinal research. Longitudinal research is a research design in which data-gathering is administered repeatedly over an extended period of time. For example, we may survey a group of individuals about their dietary habits at age 20, retest them a decade later at age 30, and then again...

In cross-sectional research, a researcher compares multiple segments of the population at the same time. If they were interested in people's dietary habits, the researcher might directly compare different groups of people by age. Instead of following a group of people for 20 years to see how their dietary habits changed from decade to decade, the researcher would study a group of 20-year-old individuals and compare them to a group of 30-year-old individuals and a group of 40-year-old...

The science of statistics involves collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting data. The method of collecting, organizing, and summarizing data is called descriptive statistics. The systematic method of drawing inferences from the sample data and predicting unknown characteristics of a population is called inferential statistics.
In statistics, the collection of individuals or objects under study is called population. The idea of sampling is to select a portion of the larger population...

Data collection refers to a systematic way of obtaining, observing, measuring, and analyzing accurate information. Observational studies are one of the most widely used methods of data collection. It involves collecting data by observing the behavior and physical characteristics of a sample without making any modifications to the sample.
An astronomer viewing the motion and brightness of stars in the sky and recording the data is an example of observational data collection. A botanist recording...

The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, or SPSS, is a data management and analysis software suite. Developed by SPSS Inc. in 1968 and acquired by IBM in 2009, this tool was initially designed for social science data analysis, evolving to serve a wider range of disciplines. It was later renamed to Statistical Product and Service Solutions.
SPSS streamlines the process from data preparation to analysis and reporting. It is characterized by its user-friendly interface, which conceals...