Introduction to research data management - a social science case study

Slides provided by DaMaRO Project, University of Oxford

Research Services

The researcher

 Dr David Alsop, a postdoc in the Department of Anthropology   Studying the structures and dynamics of the Fijian community in Japan Research conducted through a year’s fieldwork  Involved participant observation, face-to-face interviews, and a questionnaire

Research Services

The dataset

 70 recorded interviews of roughly an hour each  Transcripts of the interviews  64 questionnaire responses  120 pages of field notes  Statistical data on migrants in Japan  Plus tourist pamphlets, photos, books, journal articles, etc…

Research Services

Storage and back-up strategy

 Working data stored on personal laptop  Weekly back-up to external hard drive, and to two memory sticks  Key files also sent as email attachments, or saved to Dropbox  Post-project, data copied to DVDs for long-term storage

Research Services

Introduction to research data management Page 4

File naming strategies – examples

 Order by date: 2013-04-12_interview-recording_THD.mp3

2013-04-12_interview-transcript_THD.docx

2012-12-15_interview-recording_MBD.mp3

2012-12-15_interview-transcript_MBD.docx

 Order by subject: MBD_interview-recording_2012-12-15.mp3

MBD_interview-transcript_2012-12-15.docx

THD_interview-recording_2013-04-12.mp3

THD_interview-transcript_2013-04-12.docx

 Order by type: Interview-recording_MBD_2012-12-15.mp3

Interview-recording_THD_2013-04-12.mp3

Interview-transcript_MBD_2012-12-15.docx

Interview-transcript_THD_2013-04-12.docx

 Forced order with numbering: 01_THD_interview-recording_2013-04-12.mp3

02_THD_interview-transcript_2013-04-12.docx

03_MBD_interview-recording_2012-12-15.mp3

04_MBD_interview-transcript_2012-12-15.docx

Research Services

File naming strategies

In retrospect I am not very happy with the method I used for naming files. The biggest problem was with the newspaper articles I downloaded… I named the files only based on the topic of the article, without mentioning the name of the periodical and the year of publication, which would have been very useful later, when I began writing the thesis. – Doctoral student researching communication history

Research Services

Metadata – data about data

 A formal, structured description of a dataset  Used by archives to create catalogue records

Research Services

Introduction to research data management Page 7

Data preservation and sharing plan

 Confidentiality considerations prevent the interview recordings being made available in unedited form  However, anonymized selections of the data may be made available to accompany publications  Researcher will also re-use the data himself, for comparative purposes, in a project looking at Fijian migrants in London

Research Services

Rights and re-use

    This slideshow is part of a series of research data management training resources prepared by the DaMaRO Project at the University of Oxford It is based on information about real research projects provided by the academics who worked on them – though all names have been changed, and case studies may have been edited, amplified, or combined With the exception of clip art used with permission from Microsoft , the slideshow is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License Within the terms of this licence, we actively encourage sharing, adaptation, and re-use of this material

Research Services