COVID 19 - Web Scraping Data (online) (cancelled)
Date:
18/05/2021
Organised by:
The University of Edinburgh
Presenter:
Dr Diarmuid McDonnell, Research Fellow, Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham
Level:
Intermediate (some prior knowledge)
Contact:
Laura Marshall
L.marshall@ed.ac.uk
Working week Monday - Wednesday
Venue: Online
Description:
There is an unprecedented amount of information on the internet that could usefully be harvested in order to investigate the COVID -19 pandemic.
This half-day course will showcase suitable techniques for web scraping COVID -19 data.
There will be a series of practical examples demonstrated using the Python programming language.
It is most suited to empirical social science researchers interested in collecting data on COVID -19 and the pandemic.
Course Content:
- The structure of a web pages and how they can be navigated to collect COVID – 19 data
- Scraping, formatting and saving data scraped from the web
- Ethical and legal considerations when scraping data
- Introduction to the Python programming language
Participants will gain:
- A clearer understanding of the concept of web scraping COVID-19 data
- An understanding of the fundamental skills required for scraping a web page
- An understanding of how to marshal scrapped data and construct a dataset suitable for social research
- An awareness of the scope and limitation of web scraping approaches
- An awareness of the theoretical, practical and ethical issues relating to scraping data
There are no prerequisites, however having attended the NCRM workshop Web Scraping to Build Social Research Data will be an advantage (held on 17th May 2021) https://go.soton.ac.uk/dce
Target Audience:
Postgraduate students, earlier career researchers, and mid to late career researchers interested in re-skilling.
The course will be delivered online and the course will run from 13:00 - 16:00
Cost:
The fee per teaching day is: • £30 per day for UK/EU registered students • £60 per day for staff at UK/EU academic institutions, UK/EU Research Councils researchers, UK/EU public sector staff and staff at UK/EU registered charity organisations and recognised UK/EU research institutions. • £100 per day for all other participants. Cancellation Policy: Please be reminded that you will be charged the full registration fee if you cancel your place within 4 weeks before the training delivery date or you fail to attend. If you are able to fill the place on the course you are cancelling then the cancellation charge will not apply.
Region:
Scotland
Keywords:
Digital Social Research, Online Data Collection , Research Ethics, Web scraping, python
Related publications and presentations:
Digital Social Research
Online Data Collection
Research Ethics