Managing and Sharing Qualitative Data

This is a hands-on workshop on the management of qualitative social science data, with a focus on data sharing and transparency. While the workshop addresses data management throughout the lifecycle – from data management plan to data sharing – its focus is on the particular challenges in sharing qualitative data and in making qualitative research transparent. One set of challenges concerns the ethical and legal concerns in sharing qualitative data. We will consider obtaining permissions for sharing qualitative data from human participants, strategies for (and limits of) de-identifying qualitative data, and options for restricting access to sensitive qualitative data. We will also briefly look at copyright and licensing and how they can inhibit the public sharing of qualitative data. A second set of challenges concerns the lack of standardized guidelines for making qualitative research processes transparent. Following on some of the themes touched on in the talk, we will jointly explore some cutting edge approaches for making qualitative research transparent and discuss their potentials as well as shortcomings for different forms of research.