Tending and enhancing your data: essential skills in qualitative data management for the social sciences

14 November 2014

Alexandra Stam & Brian Kleiner, FORS

High-quality research in the social sciences is known for its good theory, concepts, collection methods, and analytical techniques. Equally - and increasingly - important in today’s research environment are skills in data management, which ensure that data are properly handled, stored, secured, documented, transferred, and shared, all in an ethical manner. Not only are these essential to protect your data from data-related risks, they also lead to greater efficiency and research quality.

This unconventional workshop will focus on two key ethics-related data management skills for qualitative researchers – informed consent and anonymization. It will also address other aspects, such as data storage, backup and security, data documentation, and data sharing. Applying best practice in these areas will help you get the most from your research data.

Target group:

Doctoral candidates in the social sciences employing empirical qualitative methods.

Objectives:

Participants will become better skilled in and more knowledgeable about informed consent, anonymisation, and the other key data management skills noted in the description, especially as these relate to their own research projects.

Methods:

Hands-on learning and exercises, using real data, within an innovative and intriguing pedagogical framework! 

Required preparation:

Participants should bring examples of informed consent forms, either from their own research or from other studies.

Lausanne

Date: Friday 14 November 2014

Schedule: 9:00 to 17:00

Location: University of Lausanne

Alexandra Stam is a senior researcher at FORS since 2009, working principally in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Statistical Office to facilitate research access to public micro-data. Prior to this, she worked several years at the University of Dundee in Scotland as a teaching fellow and research assistant. Trained as a geographer, her research interests are on new forms of migration, particularly student mobility, and marriage migration. She completed a PhD in 2011 on 'marriage migration and the geographies of love', combining both quantitative and qualitative methods. She is currently working on the 2016-2017 Swiss Federal Survey of Adolescents (ch-x), which will investigate geographical mobility among young people.

Brian Kleiner is head of Data and Research Information Services at the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences FORS, and is member of the FORS Executive Board. He oversees the national social science data archive and inventory of research projects in Switzerland, as well as a range of activities that encourage and facilitate secondary use of data. He has over 17 years of experience in survey research and is interested in both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. As a sociolinguist by training (Ph.D., Michigan State University), he also conducts methodological research that examines the complex functions of language in surveys.

Participants are eligible for reimbursement of incurred travel expenses by train between the town of their university and the location of the workshop (half-fare card, 2nd class).

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