Research Guide

Use the archive without overstating it.

Campus Evidence Lab is useful when a researcher treats records as public documentation, not as a complete measure of campus safety, institutional quality, legal truth, or community experience.

Start With A Narrow Question

Good questions name a source boundary, time period, geography, community label, or documentation pattern. Weak questions ask the archive to rank schools, explain motive beyond the source basis, or prove prevalence.

• Better: What source types document public campus civil-rights records in the current snapshot?
• Better: Which states have public-source records in this archive, and where are documentation gaps visible?
• Better: How often do current records include public institutional response text?
• Avoid: Which campus is safest, most dangerous, or most hostile?

Read Counts As Documentation

Record counts reflect public-source availability, reporting practices, source discovery, school size, jurisdiction, institutional transparency, and current reviewer capacity. They do not directly measure incident prevalence.

Check Source Support

• Open the event page and read the linked source page.
• Check source type, publisher, publication date, and access date.
• Read confidence and verification as source-support labels, not severity labels.
• Use the source audit and snapshot hash when reproducibility matters.

Compare Carefully

Comparisons should be framed as documentation comparisons. A school with more records may have more public reporting, more complete disclosures, more discoverable sources, a larger population, or more public actions captured by the current scope. A school with no records may still have incidents, complaints, private reports, or undiscovered public sources.

Cite The Snapshot

When citing the dataset, include the snapshot ID, full snapshot hash, access date, and the specific event, school, source, or brief URL used. The current manifest is published at data/snapshot-manifest.json.

Use The Right Artifact

• Use event pages for individual public records.
• Use school pages for source-backed timelines at one institution.
• Use source pages to inspect provenance and referenced records.
• Use CSV exports for lightweight analysis.
• Use JSON exports and snapshots for reproducible analysis.
• Use briefs for publication-cycle notes and analysis memos tied to a dataset hash.

Report Gaps Instead Of Filling Them With Assumptions

If a source is missing, a classification is uncertain, or a school appears undercovered, treat that as a research gap. Submit public sources or source-backed corrections through the contributor workflow rather than inferring private facts.

Responsible Output Checklist

• State that the dataset is public-source documentation, not a census.
• Use neutral language and attribute claims to sources.
• Separate public allegations, official findings, legal filings, and institutional statements.
• Do not rank schools by safety, hate, moral standing, or lived experience.
• Link the methodology, snapshot manifest, and relevant source pages.