A Look Behind the Scenes: Just as Special x UC Berkeley’s Data Science Discovery Program
In the spring of 2023, thirteen UC Berkeley students worked with Just as Special under Berkeley's Data Science Discovery Program to discover new insights about foster care resources in Colorado. Check out the specifics of our findings! We are proud to say that the hard work put into this project was awarded the Runner-Up for the “Ribbon of Excellence” recognition out of more than 110 projects at the Spring 2023 UC Berkeley Data Science Discovery Showcase.
But something you can’t find in the overall findings is what went into the process of this project. Who participated in what parts of the project and what came out of it? Especially with the rise of data science across various fields today, you may be wondering how data is used for social good.
Here, we are able to get a deeper look into those who contributed to this research process. We will dive into the experiences of these students, learning about the challenges they faced, the lessons they learned, and the fulfillment they gained from using their data science skills to make a difference in the lives of foster care children and families.
Discover the human side of data science for social good and gain insight into the invaluable collaboration between Just as Special (JAS) and UC Berkeley. We hope these student stories will inspire and encourage you and others to harness the potential of data science to create positive change in society.
For me, the most fun part of work was to participate in the analysis of real-world data. In the first week of work, we separated the data of Excel databases into different columns, but this process was not fun for me, because I felt that the code knowledge I learned did not help me deal with this work. However, when the work entered phase 2, which is now, I felt it was difficult and super fun.
In this phase, we need to analyze possible problems in real life through the materials sorted out by ourselves in the first week. What Cindy and I are dealing with is "What are the main forms of public transportation in Colorado that are accessible to Just as Special resources?". In this process, we learned how to use Geographic Information Systems to visualize our data and provide evidence for later analysis. We tried to use our database to integrate with the Colorado public transportation roadmap to find the most convenient transportation for the foster family. I was able to realize at this stage that our work would facilitate children in foster care and influence reality through my own analysis. This feeling is very fulfilling and interesting. This is a joy I did not experience during my last project activity, and I am looking forward to seeing the results of the analysis we are working on in the coming weeks.
I really enjoyed seeing the project come together from the initial data cleaning and analysis to putting all of our work together into a cohesive whitepaper and presentation. Doing this was the best way to visualize the different types of resources that JAS provides and think about how the public would interact with them. It was also great to do this work with the team since the collaboration of our different skills and backgrounds allowed us to build creative ways to represent our findings. Overall, compiling the project and seeing the data in different representations really puts into perspective how different groups like current and former foster care individuals or others involved in foster care resources can benefit from JAS as a whole.
I cleaned and categorized podcast episodes of interviews with members of the foster care community and used sentiment analysis to identify the emotional tone of the interviews. This project was incredibly rewarding, and it gave me a deeper understanding of the challenges and triumphs faced by those in the foster care community. I would encourage any student interested in data science for social good to get involved in projects like this! It is a great way to utilize your skills to make a real difference. Some advice would be to keep in mind the ethical implications of your work, be transparent about your findings, and be patient during the analysis even if you do not find out about something right away.
As someone with cousins who were adopted from South Korea, I was thrilled to have found Just As Special because of how closely its goals for the foster care system aligned with my family. I have always been a firm believer in personalizing data, and Just As Special gave me the perfect opportunity to do just that. I loved being part of a project that I knew would actually have an impactful place in the real world. I was challenged to push myself as an aspiring data scientist and got to learn more than I thought possible as a freshman. Our project manager, Emmy Tither, was an amazing and understanding source of support throughout the whole process. They granted all of the project members, including myself, flexibility to experiment with data methods in a well-organized manner, especially when it came to Natural Language Processing with the audio team I was a part of. It was my first time navigating a topic this advanced, but I was able to effectively collaborate with fellow students and apply our collective learning experiences together. I am proud of how far our project has developed, and I am grateful to have contributed research on the emotions experienced during foster care parenting with such a talented group of people.
Working on this project with JAS was a great opportunity to develop the techniques that I had been learning in my data science courses and apply them to real-world contexts. Rather than working on pre-analyzed datasets for the sake of learning a concept, I found it really interesting and fulfilling to base the techniques I was using on the dataset. The JAS project gave me multiple opportunities to learn entirely new skills as well. For example, I learned to use ArcGIS to look more in-depth at mapping and location-based analysis using this software, and learning its limitations. One of my favorite things about this project was that we were able to use JAS’s points of interest within the data and develop our questions with these goals in mind to find a research question we were genuinely interested in. JAS provides such a valuable resource to the foster care community and I hope that the work that we did on the datasets is helpful in preserving it for the future. Working in JAS also allowed me to develop collaboration skills, as we communicated entirely virtually using Zoom and Discord. I had never participated in an entirely virtual project before, and I feel so much more confident in my ability to communicate and work effectively in a virtual setting. My piece of advice for students interested in data science for social good would be to choose projects that you genuinely find interesting and try to find ways that the project can fit the area of data science you are most interested in exploring!
Participating in this project was a learning experience for all of us from start to finish. That is true for me too, as the team leader. While I knew that Just As Special’s resource database and podcast had the potential to be used to reveal further insights about the foster care community, I didn’t dare hope that we would accomplish so much in such a short time. This is really a testament to the skills and dedication of the accomplished group of students who volunteered their expertise to the project.
Discover the human side of data science.
The project between UC Berkeley’s Data Science Discovery Discovery program and Just as Special was an overall success as team members created findings to contribute to the foster care community, while learning more about data science tools and working with datasets for social good in the process. Strong collaboration between the members allowed everyone to build off each other and learn new things together about working in data science and the impacts of foster care resources as a whole. We highly encourage others interested in data science to pursue working in social good projects that can help benefit your community and create an impact in a field that you are passionate about.
If you are interested in learning more about the project, feel free to check out the project’s official whitepaper and showcase presentation slide deck. If you would like to learn more about Just as Special resources as a whole, we encourage you to visit our website and contact us if you have any questions or inquiries about the research!