Louise Corti

Recent developments in archiving social research

Recent developments in archiving have built on a 50 year foundation of sharing social survey data and are enabling the take-up of data curation practices on a wider scale. Advances in data archiving have been driven by the quest for comparable and harmonised data sources and mandates from sponsors of research to make data accessible – to provide both transparency and to maximise re-use value. In this paper, I discuss four recent developments that are bringing challenges for social science data archives: methods for archiving qualitative data; providing safe access to disclosive data; institutional data archiving initiatives; and dealing with the emergence of ‘new’ data types.

Learning to manage and share data: jump-starting the research methods curriculum

Researchers’ responsibilities towards their research data are changing across all domains of social scientific endeavour. Government, funders and publishers expect greater transparency of, open access to, and re-use of research data, and fears over data loss call for more robust information security practices. Researchers must develop, enhance and professionalise their research data management skills to meet these challenges and to deal with a rapidly changing data sharing environment. This paper sets out how we have contributed to jump-starting the research methods training curriculum in this field by translating high-level needs into practical guidance and training activities. Our pedagogical approach involves applicable, easy-to-digest, modules based on best practice guidance for managing and sharing research data. In line with recent findings on successful practices in methods teaching, we work on the principle of embedding grounded learning activities within existing narratives of research design and implementation.

Editorial for Special Edition, Digital Representations

This collection of papers comprises five contributions with a social science or social historical perspective that present the current state of the art in the field of re-using and publishing digital qualitative data. The articles address the use of digital sources in qualitative research in both research and teaching, charting types of use over the past 10 years, and looking forward to emerging practices and methods, such as the promise and potential that technological innovations can bring to enable new ways of presenting and publishing qualitative research. Some of the papers make use of direct linking allowing the reader to explore “live” data sources, offering an opportunity to see how research transparency might be operationalized in the presentation of qualitative findings and reporting. The papers reference major contributions to the literature and present stimulating debates on the topic and build on previously well-cited publications in which the editors have presented state-of-the-art articles on secondary analysis of qualitative data.

Supporting student research with semantic technologies and digital archives

This article discusses how the idea of higher education students as producers of knowledge rather than consumers can be operationalised by means of student research projects, in which processes of research archiving and analysis are enabled through the use of semantic technologies. It discusses how existing digital repository frameworks can be extended, and processes of data ingest, description and annotation made easier. It describes a set of easy-to-use self-archiving tools that have been developed to complement and extend the Fedora digital repository, with semantic web approaches being used not only to structure personal archives but to allow these to be shared and reused. Preliminary outcomes of research with undergraduate education studies students are presented, showing how their emerging research, writing and archiving practices might be supported and developed by the availability of such tools.

Survey Data in Teaching Project (SDiT): Enhancing critical thinking and data numeracy

Through a number of strategic investments by various funding organisations, the UK academic community has access to a unique and expansive range of digital data resources. The Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS), supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is a national data service. ESDS provides access and support for an extensive range of key economic and social data, both quantitative and qualitative, spanning many disciplines and themes. It comprises a number of specialist data services that promote and encourage data usage in teaching and research. While individual datasets are used extensively in academic research, they are signifi cantly under used in learning and teaching programmes within Higher Education (HE), at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and are rarely used in Further Education (FE). As a service provider of the ESDS, the UK Data Archive (UKDA) is in a strong position to offer its data resources to the learning and teaching communities for developing materials that might be more appealing to teachers than raw data. This activity requires advice and input from instructors in the classroom on how to develop the pedagogic aspects of learning resources: which content to extract; how to contextualise and apply raw data; where to position such resources in the learning process; and on the usability and functionality of the digital resources created. This paper describes the UKDA Survey Data in Teaching project (SDiT), funded under the JISC Exchange for Learning (X4L) Programme. The project’s goals were to increase the use of real data sources in the classroom, and in a more ambitious sense, to help improve the data literacy of those studying social sciences, from school students age 16-19 to postgraduates. The project created a set of free teaching and learning data and statistics-oriented resources based on the study of crime in society, and were based on learning strategies that encourage the teaching of research methods within a substantive context. This paper addresses both the positive experiences and challenges that arose from running the project.

Using NESSTAR Light to Access Major UK Datasets Online

Many government departments, research institutes, companies, and others collect social and economic data. Many of these datasets are available for re-use, particularly for research and education, typically via data archives and libraries. Currently, NESSTAR users can access this type of data from a number of European data archives, including the 3 main partners in the project: UK Data Archive, Norwegian Social Science Data Services and the Danish Data Archive. The number and type of data and data providers is continually expanding and NESSTAR is also being used by other data communities as an Intranet service. This article focuses upon the use of NESSTAR in serving the needs of users of data archives.

Latest news from the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) qualitative data archival resource centre

for almost two years. Its aims are: locating, assessing and documenting qualitative data and arranging for their deposit in suitable public archive repositories; disseminating information about such data; and raising archival consciousness among the social science research community. Ultimately, the Centre aims to implement a policy ensuring that qualitative data produced by future ESRC and other funded projects are offered for archiving. Those applying to ESRC for research grants over the past few months will have noticed the inclusion of questions relating to plans for archiving any qualitative data they produce. Principal investigators must therefore now be extra thoughtful in their plans for ’processing’ materials they generate in the course of their