Research collaboration
The data is already public and free. What a collaboration adds, and what KARA asks in return.
KARA holds two decades of child protection reporting and a cited source library built to be used by somebody other than KARA. If you are writing a thesis, running a study, or building a dataset, this is faster than scraping the site.
What is already public
- The source library. 11,766 cited sources, browsable and filterable at resources.
- State records. 52 of them, one per state plus DC and Puerto Rico, at states.
- The archive. Two decades of reporting at the blog, tagged by topic, role and state.
- Methodology. Research and data, and the platform it runs on at the data platform.
All of it is free, with no login. Cite it and it has done its job.
What a collaboration adds
Mostly three things: a cut of the data in the shape your analysis actually wants, somebody who can tell you how a field was collected before you build on it, and a route to publish findings where the people making decisions will see them. KARA has run this with student teams at around fifty institutions, so the format is familiar rather than experimental.
For a term-length student project, partnerships sets out how those are scoped.
What KARA asks in return
That findings come back, whatever they say. A result that contradicts something KARA has published is more useful than one that agrees, and the accuracy audits on this site exist because that has happened before.
Propose something
Write to info@invisiblechildren.org with your institution, the question you are asking, and what you would need. If you have a proposal already, send it. Research submissions is the route for work that is already finished.