(This article was originally published at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science, and syndicated at StatsBlogs.)
I received the following email today:
Professor Gelman,
My name is **, I am a senior at the University of ** studying **, and recently came across your paper, “What is the Probability That Your Vote Will Make a Difference?” in my Public Choice class. I am wondering if you are able to send me the actual probabilities that you calculated for all of the states, as some are mentioned in the paper, but I can’t find the actual data anywhere online.
The reason I ask is that I am trying to do some analysis on rational voter absenteeism. Specifically I want to see if there is any correlation between the probability that someone’s vote will make a difference (From your paper) and the voter turnout in each state in the 2008 election.
Thanks!
Hmmm, where are the data? I went to the page of my published papers, searched on “What is the probability” and found the file, which was called probdecisive2.pdf, then searched on my computer for that file name, found the directory, came across two seemingly relevant files, electionnight.R and nate.R, and send this student a quick email with those two R files and all the data files that were referenced there. No big deal, it took about 5 minutes.
And then I was reminded of this item that Malte Elson pointed me to the other day, a GoFundMe website that begins:
My name is Chris Ferguson, I am a psychology professor at Stetson University in DeLand, FL. In my research, I’m studying how media affect children and young adults.
Earlier this year, another researcher from Brigham Young University published a three-year longitudinal study between viewing relational aggression on TV and aggressive behavior in the journal Developmental Psychology. Longitudinal studies are rare in my field, so I was very excited to see this study, and eager to take a look at the data myself to check up on some of the analyses reported by the authors.
So I spoke with the Flourishing Families project staff who manage the dataset from which the study was published and which was authored by one of their scholars. They agreed to send the data file, but require I cover the expenses for the data file preparation ($300/hour, $450 in total; you can see the invoice here). Because I consider data sharing a courtesy among researchers, I contacted BYU’s Office of Research and Creative Activities and they confirmed that charging a fee for a scholarly data request is consistent with their policy.
Given I have no outside funding, I might not be able to afford the dataset of Dr. [Sarah] Coyne’s study, although it is very important for my own research. Although somewhat unconventional, I am hoping that this fundraising site will help me cover parts of the cost!
The paper in question was published in the journal Developmental Psychology. On the plus side, no public funding seems to have been involved, so I guess I can’t say that these data were collected with your tax dollars. If BYU wants to charge $300/hr for a service that I provide for free, they can go for it.
Here’s the invoice:
In future perhaps journals will require all data to be posted as a condition of publication and then this sort of thing won’t happen anymore.
P.S. Related silliness here.
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