Abstract
Research questions frequently call for the use of publicly available online data, but data availability is often limited for much of the developing world. This article uses a study of the efficacy of different wildlife governance approaches in southern Africa to highlight some common challenges of online data gathering and analysis, together with some possible solutions. Specifically, for many developing countries, online data are frequently unavailable or sporadically available for many variables of interest. This lack of availability may require researchers to embrace new data gathering and/or analytical tools, utilize traditional (i.e., offline) methods to supplement online data gathering, identify appropriate proxy variables, and develop theoretically defensible approaches to address missing time-series data.