Street-level Bureaucracy, Dilemmas, and Research Data Management

This dataset contains 15 semi-structured interview transcripts from a study of research data managers in the United States. Study participants worked at small, medium, and large data archives. These archives were affiliated with universities but served varied constituents and provided a range of services. The study asked interview participants to describe their jobs and describe problems or dilemmas they encountered in the course of everyday work. We explicitly asked participants to describe cases where they had to exercise discretion when creating, implementing, or enforcing policy. We framed policy in an organizational and legal sense. Study participants stated that data-related policy challenges may stem from any stage of the research lifecycle.