Just as I got going on the analysis of full-time framebuilders, things got real quiet around here!
I’m still around, but a few things came up:
- I realized there were a couple of problematic cases that still needed “cleaning” in the data. Nothing fishy….but somehow I’d overlooked some internally-contradictory responses from a few builders, mainly having to do with whether people were classified as full or part time. Turns out, a few of these cases were kind of “outliers” in terms of income and output, so getting them correct was important for data quality!
- I managed to line up a series of longer phone interviews with builders, after having a hard time getting responses during much of the summer. When I record these interviews they are then transcribed, verbatim, so I can use them effectively as data – but this transcription takes some real time!
- Most significantly, the school year started. And, not just any old/typical school year, but one in which I’m teaching fully online with a class I’ve never taught before in the online format. All the usual caveats apply: I’m thankful to have a job that can be done remotely, I’m thankful to just have a job, etc., etc. But building up new slide decks, writing extensive notes/transcripts for lectures and commentaries, recording and publishing all this material is extraordinarily time-intensive. That’s my main job, and for now it’s dominating most of my time.
All that said, I’m back with the clean data and hope to be getting more of the business and livelihood analyses for full-time builders published here on the blog. I’ve also created a new filter in the data to only show builders who self-report “making a living” from the trade, so in the longer run I’ll hope to have some analyses looking at commonalities across that segment!
Handbuilding Value 