Explore your data

As soon as you have completed a gather, you can explore your data in the Explore tab of the platform. There are two ways to explore your data:

A search bar to explore data you have gathered. This will give you a sense of what is in your data and whether you need to gather additional / different data. — search par coming soon (updated December 12, 2024)
An interactive dashboard to visualize data you have gathered. When you first open it, the dashboard will only show a few basic graphs and filters that we have created for you. You can create as many additional graphs and tables as you want.

All the data you have gathered for your project is in one database, with any classifications you have created applied to the data. Both the search bar and the interactive dashboard are ways to explore this database. For details on how this database is structured, see this section of the manual.

We find it useful to explore data at different points in the process.

It’s useful to explore data right after you run a gather, just to see whether what you are collecting is what you expected. You can then edit and re-run your gather to get more or better data.
It’s useful to explore data when you first apply a classifier, just to see whether it is classifying text or authors in the way you expected. You can then edit and re-run your classifiers.
Finally, it’s useful to explore your data to find insights that can inform your peacebuilding or mediation work. Check out some case studies on this. </aside>