US childcare dataset developed by SPS PhD wins Digital Research Prize
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A project led by Social Policy PhD researcher Dalia Avello-Vega won the Best Dataset award in the University’s Centre for Data, Culture & Society (CDCS) Digital Research Prizes.
The CDCS Digital Research Prizes recognise digital research that shows creativity, excellence, impact, and best practice in the use and sharing of data.
Dalia’s project - Preschool Suspension and Expulsion Legislature in Oregon, USA - explores nursery exclusion, one of the most serious yet understudied problems in American education. The data around legislative responses to exclusion in early learning and childcare is extremely limited, meaning laws have often relied on intuitive judgement rather than evidence.
Dalia and colleagues at the University of Michigan (Erin E. Flynn and Qingqing Yan) developed a dataset to help address the gaps. The dataset is hosted at ICPSR, an international consortium of 800 academic and research bodies, which hosts the world’s largest digital archive of social science data.
Dalia said: “We are very grateful for the opportunity to share this resource with the academic community. We know that, every day, 250 children under the age of five are suspended or expelled from childcare settings, and that a large proportion of them are Black, have a disability, or live in a family with limited economic resources. Yet, lawmaking initiatives to curtail this practice are complex, contentious, and rarely successful. We hope this dataset helps researchers advance our understanding of the legislative processes behind this problem.”
Learn more on the CDCS Digital Research Prizes web pages.