Sharing experiences

Sharing data is generally a simple task but sometimes complex issues can arise that need to be thought through carefully.

View our short videos made with some of our key depositing organisations, including Natcen, DECC and ISER and the academics who collect the Skills and Employment Survey series.

Our staff have advised many hundreds of depositors from government departments to academics on how to prepare and, where necessary, protect data. While we provide detailed guidelines for data producers on many of the key issues surrounding data preparation, we appreciate that some of the same questions crop up time and time again. These tend to involve challenges such as gaining consent, exceptionally sensitive data and uncertainty about ‘how much’ anonymisation to do.

Thank you to these researchers for their efforts in making their data shareable.

Pat Caplan: Concepts of Healthy Eating Food Research: Phases I and II.

Maggie Mort: Health and Social Consequences of the Foot and Mouth Disease Epidemic in North Cumbria.

Jane Elliott: Depositing the Social Participation and Identity Sub-Sample, 2007-2010.

Sheila Henderson et al: Inventing Adulthoods: the Showcase Archive.

Karon Gush: Understanding Couples’ Experiences of Job Loss in Recessionary Britain.

Bethany Morgan-Brett: Negotiating Midlife: Exploring the Subjective Experience of Ageing, 2006-2008,

Jane Seymour: Consent for data sharing in sensitive qualitative research: burden or benefit?

Dr Lisa Calderwood: NextSteps,

Understanding Society: COVID-19 study,

Sarah Nettleton: Being a Doctor: a Sociological Analysis, 2005-2006,

We run a programme of regular training workshops covering key areas of preparing and sharing research data.