Providing Student Workspaces for Data Analysis on the Web

Tom Piazza 
Senior Survey Statistician 
Survey Research Center, CSM Program, University of California, Berkeley


Students and researchers like the convenience of being able to do
basic data analysis on the Web, without having to download a copy of
the data.  However, they often want to create their own recodes and
computed variables for datasets contained in the data archive.

At Berkeley we are currently testing a setup that uses the SDA system
to establish three levels of access and control over a dataset:

Level 1: Archive copy of the original dataset; never changed.

Level 2: Recodes created by the archive or by a professor for a
   class; students and researchers can use these variables but
   cannot delete them or create others in this category.  Users
   have access both to the Archive dataset containing the original
   variables and to this area containing "official" recodes. 

Level 3: Private workspace set up for each student in a class or
   for specific researchers; they can create and delete new variables
   that are available only to themselves; the workspace is password
   protected.  They can combine in a single table or analysis
   variables from all three levels.

The presentation will explain how this works.