About

About QualidataNet - Data sharing and management of qualitative research data

A large part of social science research is qualitative research and works with a variety of methods and their combinations. However, unlike in quantitative social research, the re-use of qualitative data is still the exception. In addition to data protection and research ethics requirements, one of the reasons for this is that the heterogeneity and complexity of the data, which often contains personal data and dense contexts, makes it difficult to process and archive for secondary use.

In cooperation with researchers, research data centers have developed solutions for the preparation, archiving and provision of qualitative research data. Nevertheless, researchers interested in secondary use often cannot find suitable data for their research project: On the one hand, the number of datasets available for secondary use is still small - which also limits the thematic breadth of research questions currently possible. On the other hand, it is difficult to find existing datasets because the datasets of several providers cannot be searched in one place.  

As part of the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) in the Consortium for the Social, Educational, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (KonsortSWD), QualidataNet was founded to close this gap. QualidataNet is a network of research data centers, archives and repositories that archive research data and materials from qualitative social research and make them available for scientific reuse.

 

As a ‚central point of entry‘, QualidataNet bundles information about research data and offers from various specialized archiving infrastructures and makes them visible. The network is aimed at qualitative researchers from all disciplines and data-holding institutions.

Service for research

  • QualidataNet offers centralized access to qualitative data from the data holders represented in the network. Qualitative data can thus be found more easily, as can the specific contacts for the respective data use.
  • QualidataNet supports interested researchers in finding the right archiving partner for them and their data and guides them through the specialized infrastructure offerings.
  • A portfolio of tools for research data management (RDM) supports researchers with questions relating to the management, sharing and reuse of qualitative research data.
  • Coordinated templates and handouts provide orientation and make it easier to deal with the central aspects of data sharing and research data management of qualitative data.

Service for infrastructure and research data centers

  • QualidataNet is open to all research data centers, archives, repositories - in short, institutions that hold qualitative data and make it available for reuse.The network partners benefit from exchange and joint developments.
  • Central aspects of research data management and data sharing of qualitative data are dealt with jointly, which avoids duplicate developments and takes into account the expertise of specialized archiving partners for a particular type of data.
  • The presentation of datasets in the QualidataNet portal increases the visibility and findability of datasets and facilitates the reuse of qualitative data.
  • With QualiTerm, QualidataNet has created a controlled vocabulary for the description of central and specific elements of qualitative research materials, developed together with qualitative researchers.

 

QualidataNet is a service created within the Consortium for the Social, Behavioral, Educational and Economic Sciences (KonsortSWD) as part of the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI).

The cooperation model was developed by five research data centers (RDC) accredited by the German Data Forum that hold qualitative data. The network is coordinated by the RDC Qualiservice at the University of Bremen.

QualidataNet is open to research data centers, archives and repositories that hold data for qualitative research and make it available for secondary use (contact us).

Network partners

Research data centers and archives

Network partners and cooperations

Become part of QualidataNet Become a network partner

QualidataNet connects providers of qualitative research data.

All institutions that archive and provide research data for qualitative secondary use can become network partners. If the datasets are provided with a persistent identifier (e.g. DOI), the metadata for the datasets of the respective institution can be presented in the QualidataNet search portal.

If you are interested in participating in QualidataNet as a research data center, repository, archive or similar and/or in increasing the findability of your datasets, please contact us.

Network partners

The research data center Qualiservice at the University of Bremen archives qualitative research data from all social science disciplines and makes it available for scientific reuse in research and teaching.

The portfolio covers the entire range of qualitative social science research data. In addition to interview data, this includes in particular ethnographic material such as field notes and observation protocols, mixed-methods data, image and sound material as well as audiovisual data. In collaboration with the specialist information services for social and cultural anthropology, sociology and political science, we are continuously expanding our portfolio and will also be archiving expert interviews, documents and social media in the future.

www.qualiservice.org

The Research Data Center at the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (RDC-DZHW) archives quantitative and qualitative data from higher education research and science studies and makes them available for secondary use as Scientific Use Files for research purposes and as Campus Use Files for teaching and training purposes.

Survey data, analysis scripts, mixed-methods data as well as transcripts of lesson recordings and various interview data (problem-centred, episodic or expert interviews), including contextualizing materials such as interview guidelines and socio-demographic questionnaires, are archived and made available. The portfolio of the RDC-DZHW is to be continuously expanded to include further data types.

www.fdz.dzhw.eu

The Research Data Center for Education (FDZ Bildung) at the DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education is a central point of contact for educational research with regard to the archiving and provision of research instruments and qualitative research data. In this role, it is also a partner in the Education Research Data Network. The FDZ Bildung provides relevant data sets and instruments for secondary use in compliance with data protection regulations via a central repository. Contextual information on the respective study of origin of the data and instruments as well as related publications complete the offer.

Observation data (e.g. teaching videos) and interview data as well as materials derived from these are made available. This includes anonymized transcripts, coding and descriptions as well as original audio and video data. A total of approx. 2500 AV files and approx. 3000 transcripts, descriptions, guidelines, codes, bibliographies etc. from almost 30 projects.

https://www.fdz-bildung.de

The Research Data Center Archive for Spoken German (FDZ-AGD) at the Leibniz Institute for the German Language collects and archives data on spoken German and makes it available for use in research and teaching. The datasets include audio and video recordings of spoken German in interactions (conversation corpora), data on domestic and foreign varieties of German (variation corpora) and data from (linguistic) biographical interviews (interview corpora). The data types managed in the AGD include audio and video recordings as well as time-aligned transcripts, other linguistic annotations, metadata and additional materials.

The AGD is constantly being expanded to include further corpora from completed surveys. With the Research and Teaching Corpus of Spoken German (FOLK), the AGD itself collects an up-to-date, comprehensive corpus of conversations in German.

https://agd.ids-mannheim.de

The Research Data Centre for Business and Organizational Data at the German Institute for Economic Research archives qualitative and quantitative business and organizational data from the social and economic sciences and makes them available for scientific reuse in research and teaching.

The portfolio includes: Interview data, expert discussions, mixed-methods data, survey data, historical economic data, measurement data and documents

https://www.diw.de/de/diw_01.c.670982.de/seiten/forschungsdatenzentrum

The research data center eLabour archives qualitative research data with a focus on the sociology of work, industry and economics and makes it available for scientific reuse in research and teaching.

The portfolio includes interview and observational data, with a focus on work and company-related case studies. The FDZ eLabour is designed to present and make available the complex, multi-method approach of the case studies in a differentiated manner. All data can be accessed on the web portal - after concluding a user contract - and can be searched, edited and downloaded for further processing in compliance with data protection measures. The portfolio is constantly being expanded in line with scientific demand.

The RDC eLabour e.V. is an association of research institutions (SOFI Göttingen, ISF Munich and others). It is closely linked to the DGS Section for Sociology of Work and Industry.

http://www.elabour.de/

aviDa is the research data center for audio-visual data of empirical qualitative social research at the Department of General Sociology at the Technical University of Berlin, developed in cooperation with the Technical University of Berlin and the University of Bayreuth. The aim of aviDa is to share videographic research data collected by researchers themselves and to open it up for re-use. It is aimed at all researchers in the field of audio-visual data in qualitative empirical social research. On aviDa, research data collected in primary research can be made accessible to third parties and reused web-based for research and teaching purposes. It is based on the DepositOnce repository for research data and publications at Technical University of Berlin (TUB) and was set up in 2018 in cooperation with the university library and TUB's Central Campus Management (ZECM).

https://depositonce.tu-berlin.de

Your contact partners

Dr. Kati Mozygemba

Postdoctoral research fellow & coordination

phone: +49 0421 218 57052

Noemi Betancort-Cabrera

Metadata & controlled vocabularies

phone: +49 0421 218 59592

Contact Didn´t find what you are looking for? ...we are happy to help.

Contact

QualidataNet is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) via KonsortSWD as part of the NFDI.

Project number: 442494171