Thinking like an investigator · Orientation
Mapping the Research Process
How do the question, data, code, AI, audit, and interpretation fit together?
Page 1 of 9 · Map
Research is a connected process
Research can feel like a collection of separate activities: finding variables, reading a codebook, cleaning data, writing Stata code, asking AI for help, and interpreting output. They are connected. Earlier decisions constrain everything that follows.
- Scientific / policy objective
- Research question
- Define population and unit of analysis
- Identify data sources
- Define concepts and variables
- Plan data construction
- Construct the analytic dataset
- Check and describe the data
- Choose the statistical comparison
- Run the analysis
- Audit results
- Interpret results
- Communicate findings
Start with the whole journey. Stata commands come after decisions about the
question, population, unit, data, variables, and comparison.
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