Qualitative Data Repository

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This project establishes a dedicated repository for storing and sharing data generated or collected through qualitative and multi-method research in the social sciences. The repository will promote greater data sharing by social scientists, play a leading role in developing and publicizing the standards and practices which are crucial for managing, sharing, and reusing qualitative data, and provide substantial pedagogical and research benefits to scholars around the world. Qualitative data are widely used by social scientists to advance a range of analytical goals, including interpretations, descriptive generalizations, and causal inferences. Unfortunately, qualitative data are typically used only once: they are collected for a particular research purpose, and then discarded. The absence of a data sharing tradition among qualitative researchers is in part due to an infrastructure gap--the absence of a suitable venue for storing and sharing qualitative data. Providing a dedicated repository for data generated by qualitative and multi-method research will fill this gap and will facilitate the standardization of archiving practices among qualitative political scientists. The Qualitative Data Repository has four main purposes. First, the repository will store data in digital form, providing access with appropriate search tools and indexes. This digitized data will include transcripts and notes from interviews, focus groups, oral histories, participant observations, and ethnographic studies, scans of archival documents, newspaper articles, and reports, and outputs from qualitative data analysis software. Second, the repository will be a portal to material beyond its own holdings, allowing users to identify relevant data from diverse databases and archives. It will establish linkages with archives in the U.S. and other countries that house qualitative data, seeking agreements for "click through" access from the repository. Third, the repository will encourage the sharing of data by qualitative and multi-method researchers by providing them a venue and the tools necessary to do so. Finally, the repository will help to promote common standards and practices for publishing qualitative research data, and for citing data and data sets produced by another scholar--as well as for granting due credit to scholars for the publication of data sets.Facilitating and regularizing the storing and sharing of data arising from qualitative and multi-method research will deliver several important benefits for the social sciences and broader academic community. By encouraging data sharing and providing a venue to do so, the repository will greatly expand the access of scholars in the United States and abroad--including those who lack the resources to engage in original data collection--to a wealth of social science data. In turn, this will make possible important research that otherwise would not be conducted. The repository will dramatically reduce the costs of assessing empirically based qualitative analysis and increase the transparency of the qualitative research process, thus bolstering confidence in the findings of qualitative studies. By increasing researcher visibility, the repository will induce intellectual exchange, promoting the formation of epistemic communities, and serving as a platform for research networks and partnerships. Overall, the repository will be poised to help NSF realize its goal of promoting more systematic qualitative research in the social sciences, thereby advancing discovery and enhancing scientific understanding.The societal benefits of this project are tied to its impact on education. The repository will effectively integrate research and education through the instructional opportunities offered by sharing data offers. The project also enhances education through the training the repository will provide.