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Class 11

Asking Spatial Questions

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Thinking about Data

  • What is it?
  • What it represents
  • How was it collected?
  • Need to develop questions about our data
    • Using data to answer questions about the world
    • Strong link between question and data

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Construct Validity

  • Relationship between the characteristic of the world and the values you have
    • How well does the data/measurement capture the characteristics of the world?
    • How does it affect ability to analyze topic?

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Example

  • Interest: Vaccine Hesitancy
  • Data: % up to data on vaccination
  • What is the issue here?
    • Vaccine hesitancy is not the only factor impacting percent up to date, which also may be affected by things such as health insurance or knowledge of vaccine requirements
  • Data might not be perfectly aligned with research interest!!
  • Solution – find different data, re-align research interest/question

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Spatial Data

  • Aggregated to geographics units
    • Counties, cities, ZIP codes
    • Whether to normalize the data by population size to account for variation among units
    • IMPORTANT when we start thinking about relationships among things

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Geography

  • Study of space and place
  • Broad
    • Human (urban, economic, critical theory)
    • Physical
    • Human/Environment
    • Geospatial Theory (GIS, remote sensing, cartography)

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Geographic Inquiry

  • Core Questions
    • Where -> descriptive
      • Location and/or distribution of phenomena
    • Why there -> explanatory
      • Relationship among phenomena
    • What next -> predictive

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Asking Spatial Questions

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    • Where is it? Why is it here/there? How much of it is here/there?

Location

    • Locally or globally? clustered or dispersed or boundaries?

Distribution

    • what is close? What occurs with it? What is absent in its presence

Association

    • Linked to something else? Nature of association? How much interaction

Interaction

    • Has it always been there? how has it changed over time and space? what causes diffusion or contraction

Change

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Spatial Pattern and Process

  • Result of some spatial process
    • We map patterns (observe, describe)
    • Model processes (understand, explain)
  • Maps can be a hindrance to advancement of GIS
    • Maps are great but also look at underlying data values!

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Formulating Research Questions

  • What are the limitations of the data?
  • What are the limitations of the analytical strategy you are going to employ?
    • Causation vs. correlation

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Analytical Strategies

  • Relationships
    • Correlation coefficient
    • Geographically Weighted Correlation
  • Causative Relationships
    • Regression
    • Spatial Regression
  • GIS-based analysis
    • Within-distance
    • Nearest
    • Buffer

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