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*Research Data Services @ Georgia State University Library: WORKSHOPs ~ Methods for Data Analysis & Collection ~ Web Scraping, Qualitative Methods, Data Discovery

WORKSHOPs ~ METHODS for DATA ANALYSIS & COLLECTION

Web Scraping | Logics & Logistics of Qualitative Research | ICPSR for Finding Secondary Datasets 

Web Scraping Workshop Series


Web Scraping Workshop Series

Get a GSU Data Ready! Badge Micro-Credential for completing these workshops to show others your commitment to learning data skills! Learn more at lib.gsu.edu/data-ready


Web Scraping Workshop


  • LIVE workshops are no longer offered.
  • For RECORDED workshops: Click here.
  • For ONLINE GUIDE: Click here.

This workshop will introduce participants to fundamental concepts and tools for programmatically scraping data from public websites. 

The internet contains immense amount of data, both structured and unstructured, that is not readily available to researchers through traditional commercial and academic databases. Blogs, market data, movie reviews, social media, press releases, and newspaper headlines are just a few examples of the type of rich content available on the web that may be best collected using web scraping tools and methods.

The workshop will be taught exclusively using Python code (i.e. no point-and-click tools).  However, everyone who is interested in web scraping, regardless of coding experience, are still welcome to join the workshop, participate in chat, and engage with the content as best they can.  All are welcome.

Skill Requirements: Basic familiarity with Python.

Software Requirements for Hands-on Participation:

  • For participants wishing to follow along with the “hands-on” portion of the workshop will need to have specific software installed prior to the start of the workshop. Software requirements and installation details can be found on the workshop webpage: https://research.library.gsu.edu/webdata/workshop

Workshop Topics:

  • Introduction to concepts, context, and use-cases related to web scraping
  • Brief discussion of legal and ethical considerations
  • Using Selenium WebDriver to access and navigate websites
  • Extracting, parsing, and processing data scraped from webpages


Twitter API Workshop


  • LIVE workshops are no longer offered.
  • For RECORDED workshops: Click here.
  • For ONLINE GUIDE: Click here.

Twitter API: Collecting Social Media Data

This workshop will introduce participants to using the Twitter API to collect social media data directly from Twitter. The workshop will also touch on some of the common concepts that are broadly related to using social media APIs.

The workshop will be taught using Python code (i.e. no point-and-click tools). However, everyone who is interested in the Twitter API, regardless of coding experience, are still welcome to join the workshop, participate in chat, and engage with the content as best they can. All are welcome.

Skill Requirements: None, but some basic familiarity with Python or coding will be helpful.

Software Requirements for Hands-on Participation:

For participants wishing to follow along with the “hands-on” portion of the workshop will need the following:

  • A Twitter Developer account.
  • A Google / Gmail account (to access Google Colab).

Additional details can be found on the workshop page: https://research.library.gsu.edu/webdata/workshop

Workshop Topics:

  • Introduction to the broad concepts and issues related to using social media APIs for research
  • Overview of the Twitter API website and documentation
  • Hands-on practice using the Twitter API and the Tweepy Python package
  • Strategies for handling API limitations
  • Parsing and organizing collected Twitter data

Logics & Logistics of Qualitative Research with NVivo Session


Logics & Logistics of Qualitative Research with NVivo Session


  • LIVE workshops typically occurs annually in October -- watch the workshops calendar for the next offering.
  • RECORDED workshop is not available.

The Logics & Logistics of Qualitative Research

A Framework for Exploring Concepts, Dimensions, and Relationships in Qualitative Data using NVivo Research Software

Dr. LaRossa and Dr. Mandy Swygart-Hobaugh present this joint session. Dr. LaRossa discusses the steps involved in building theoretically-rich qualitative analyses (the logics) and Dr. Swygart-Hobaugh outlines the specific features of NVivo qualitative research software that complement and facilitate these analyses (the logistics). NOTE: This session does NOT involve hands-on NVivo training -- see the workshop listings on this page for hands-on NVivo training opportunities.

ICPSR Workshop


ICPSR for Finding Secondary Datasets


  • LIVE workshops are no longer offered.
  • For RECORDED workshops: Click here.
  • For ONLINE GUIDE: Click here.

This workshop gives an introduction/overview of ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research). See also this video tutorial and hands-on tutorial that walk you through using ICPSR.

Workshop Topics:

  • Create and login with a MyData Account to be able to download ICPSR datasets from both on and off campus.
  • Use key search and browse features to drill down to datasets appropriate for your research or teaching purposes.
  • Use key parts of an ICPSR dataset record to identify and download datasets.
  • Understand the different access options to ICPSR datasets (public use v. restricted use).

Prerequisites: None.