Finally, new software, makes this really important method accessible to everyone. CatMapper (a free resource) can assist users in translating and merging data across diverse international datasets by complex, dynamic, and hierarchically organized categories (e.g., ethnicity, religion, language, and subdistricts). In this workshop, we will engage in hands-on activities to introduce users to CatMappers’s key functions, including: (1) exploring details about specific categories (e.g., ethnicities) and where data is available on them, (2) translating categories across datasets, (3) merging data from diverse sources for novel analyses, and (4) sharing the details of these merges and bespoke crosswalks for others to re-use or replicate.
CatMapper is a newly built interface that provides tools to assist researchers in linking data at the level of ethnicities, languages, religions, subdistricts, across a range of international microdata sources (e.g., DHS, MICS, LSMS, Afrobarometer, Latinobarometro, Asian Barometer, EU-MIDIS, World Values Survey, and national censuses), ethnicity-level datasets (e.g., Ethnic Power Relations, All Minorities at Risk, Politically Relevant Ethnic Groups, Ethnographic Atlas, Berezkin Folklore, Human Relations Area Files, DPLACE, People of India), district-level datasets (Gennaioli, Global Data Lab, geoBoundaries, GADM, Geonames), and religion-level datasets (Religion and State Minorities, Global Data Lab, Database of Religious History).
CatMapper/ArchaMap extends these tools to categories of interest to archaeologists, including sites, artifact types, faunal categories, and time periods.
This workshop is intended for researchers who would like to bring together data from diverse international sources by complex categories, such as ethnicity, language, religion, or administrative subdivisions.
Development of CatMapper has been supported by funding from the NSF (BCS-2318505, BCS-2051369)
SocioMap app: https://www.catmapper.org/js/sociomap
Instructor: Dr. Daniel Hruschka, School of Evolution and Social Change, ASU
Dr. Dan Hruschka is a Professor of Global Health and Anthropology at Arizona State University. Much of Dan’s research focuses on how social and economic inequalities produce health disparities worldwide. This research relies on bringing together data from diverse, international datasets by complex categories, such as ethnicity, languages, and religions. To help researchers tackle the thorny challenge of data synthesis by these complex categories, Dan is leading a team to develop user-friendly, web-based tools (CatMapper, https://www.catmapper.org/js) that enable researchers to search and translate categories across datasets and share these translations with others.
Co-Presenter: Robert Bischoff, PhD candidate, Arizona State University
Robert Bischoff is a PhD candidate at Arizona State University (ASU) and the digital data specialist at the Center for Archaeology and Society. As a computational archaeologist, his research focuses on museum collections and legacy data. He has published work on the Ancestral Pueblo, Fremont, and Hohokam cultures. With a focus on quantitative and computational methods, he uses network science, GIS, geometric morphometrics (2D and 3D shape analysis), and agent-based modeling to research social interaction in the past.
Date: March 28th, 2025
Time: 9:30am - 4:00pm
Location: Tempe Campus, Coor Hall, Room 5635
Registration Fee: $25 - Lunch is included in the fee