AERA and ICPSR Launch PEERS Data Hub to Advance STEM Education Research Efforts


November  2020

AERA and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) have launched the Partnership for Expanding Education Research in STEM (PEERS) Data Hub—http://peersdatahub.org/—a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded collaborative space for STEM education research communities to build and advance knowledge by sharing innovative ideas, methods, and tools. The new platform is supported by NSF through its Core Research Program in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR).

“We are thrilled to launch the PEERS Data Hub in collaboration with ICPSR,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine. “The hub is a web-based platform to drive discovery through data, connect and create community across diverse STEM researchers, and build capacity for innovation in methods and data use. We encourage investigators across career stages to come to, meet up at, and benefit from the hub.”

“The hub will be a place that breaks through the glass ceilings that many underrepresented STEM education researchers and graduate students face,” said ICPSR Director Margaret Levenstein. “The hub will be an inclusive home that empowers STEM education researchers to use new types of data in innovative ways. It will increase the impact and productivity of their research.”

The  PEERS Data Hub opened on November 13, with a workshop offered to NSF’s awardees in the EHR Core Research (ECR) program—Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER). AERA and ICPSR will hold a grand opening webinar on the Hub early in January 2021.

The PEERS Data Hub can help researchers to:

  • Discover data that meet their needs, wherever the data sets are located worldwide, and identify and explore diverse forms of designed data, administrative data, and big data.
  • Connect to others with diverse methodological interests or expertise, through the PEERS Interactive Researcher Gallery and through virtual research "pods" that are topic-focused and managed by experts.
  • Learn how to more efficiently navigate the stages of the research process with resource guides, templates, videos, and workshops.

Through the data hub, AERA and ICPSR will offer technical assistance and professional development opportunities to expand access to and use of data and to support innovative ideas and inquiry. The PEERS project is being led by Principal Investigators Levenstein and Levine.

An advisory board made up of scholars with expertise in data methods and analysis is providing guidance on the project. The advisory board consists of the following individuals:

  • Lisa C. Benson, Clemson University
  • Sean P. “Jack” Buckley, Imbellus (former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics)
  • Greg J. Duncan, University of California, Irvine
  • Noah Finkelstein, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Gustavo E. Fischman, Arizona State University
  • Kris D. Gutiérrez, University of California, Berkeley
  • Larry V. Hedges, Northwestern University
  • Andrew Dean Ho, Harvard University
  • Michelle G. Knight-Manuel, Columbia University, Teachers College
  • Ebony O. McGee, Vanderbilt University
  • Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux, California Institute of Technology
  • Chandra L. Muller, University of Texas at Austin
  • Jason Owen-Smith, University of Michigan
  • William F. Tate IV, University of South Carolina
  • Katherine K. Wallman, Chief Statistician of the United States (emerita)
  • Elizabeth Yakel, University of Michigan