GESIS online talks on Social Science Methods and Research Data
With our series we offer brief insights into current social science methodological research and the design and analysis potential of GESIS research data.
+++ We will be back on 14 September 2023 and start with a new season on Data Services, Data Archiving und Data Management +++
Set up & registration: Each session consists of a talk and a moderated Q&A part. All talks will take place online as Zoom meetings on Thursdays, 1 pm-2 pm (CET/CEST). Please register for the session(s) you are interested in below (click on blue bars beyond to expand). Your registration will be confirmed by email.
Data protection: Your contact information will be deleted at GESIS after the talks you registered for have been completed. More information on data protection at GESIS can be found here.
Slides and a recording of the talk will be made publicly available after each session. Please check the descriptions of past talks for respective links (click on blue bars to expand). For the recordings you might also go directly to the “meet the experts” playlists on the GESIS YouTube channel. (Side note: only the talk will be recorded, not the Q&A.)
Contact, questions & feedback: You can reach the meet the experts team via email.
If you wish to keep up with events and other GESIS activities, please subscribe to the monthly bilingual GESIS newsletter.
Season 5: Data Services, Data Archiving, and Research Data Management
The meet-the-experts season Data Services, Data Archiving, and Research Data Management covers core activities of GESIS. These activities aim at handling quantitative research data published by external researchers as well as by researchers from our own institute. We introduce the criteria for a trustworthy digital repository, show how GESIS ensures high quality of research data through its Data Services, and present how standardized metadata can help to find, analyze, and reuse existing datasets. You will get to know the data holdings, the ‘Community Data Collection’, and one exemplary topical data collection concerning racism and right-wing extremism (DP-R|EX). Also, GESIS was one of the first institutions addressing the professionalization of Research Data Management and we will introduce our activities in that field as well as the importance of domain-specific infrastructures and the handling of access to sensitive data.
Registration (via Zoom) |
Slides (694 kB) | Presentation on YouTube | MTE Playlist
The Lecture will be held in English.
With increased expectations of researchers and funders for the long-term accessibility and usability of research outputs, data in particular, many repositories and research data centers are considering certification as a trustworthy data repository. In this session of “Meet the Experts” Jonas Recker (GESIS/CoreTrustSeal) and Kerstin Beck (GESIS/KonsortSWD) will provide a short overview of certification standards for trustworthy digital repositories with a particular focus on CoreTrustSeal (https://www.coretrustseal.org). In addition, they will outline initial steps which repositories and research data centers can take towards certification, as well as existing alternatives to formal certification.
Presenters:
Registration (via Zoom) |
Slides | Presentation on YouTube | MTE Playlist
The Lecture will be held in English.
GESIS is preserving and publishing quantitative social science research data for over 60 years. This work comprises of many tasks surrounding quality checks, documentation, long-term preservation, data access, and in some cases data cleaning. In 2016 GESIS introduced the Data Services. They comprise of the three service packages Archiving BASIC, PLUS and PREMIUM, consulting and training offers in Research Data Management, as well as .on-site data access services through the Secure Data Center (SecDC). In this session Oliver Watteler (GESIS) gives an overall introduction into the Data Services and goes into detail on the three service packages.
Presenters:
Registration (via Zoom) |
Slides | Presentation on YouTube | MTE Playlist
The Lecture will be held in English.
The Community Data Collection comprises approximately 5000 German and international studies made available to users for secondary analysis and replications. These studies have been given to GESIS by the scientific community to share with other researchers and represent a rich spectrum of content and methodology. The available data includes core topics of social science research, such as political attitudes and behavior, education, migration, or family, which are organized in topical collections. In this session, Alexander Jedinger (GESIS) will give an overview of the data offered by the Community Data Collection and present examples of the analysis potential of some highlight studies.
Presenters:
Registration (via Zoom) |
Slides | Presentation on YouTube | MTE Playlist
The Lecture will be held in English.
The GESIS Data Archive provides a broad range of data. These data have been used by social scientists for a long time for observing societies and people. While the archive traditionally contains primarily surveys, other types of data have gained importance in recent years. This development poses challenges, for example, regarding the technical processing of very large datasets, the integration of data from new and diverse sources such as web-tracking or smartphone app data, or data from interdisciplinary collaborations. In order to make this data available to users in a meaningful way, it is crucial to understand aspects such as study design, data collection methods, and data cleaning and coding procedures.
Metadata helps describe all these aspects of the studies and their resulting datasets. Moreover, if metadata is standardized, it can help to find, analyze, and reuse existing datasets. At the data archive, we currently use DDI, as it is the most prominent social science metadata standard. However, the described challenges require other relevant standards to be considered, evaluated and incorporated where appropriate. Notably, management of controlled vocabularies, e.g., supplied by DDI, ISO, CESSDA or others, are needed. Practical considerations also include using DDI-Codebook or DDI-Lifecycle, specific versions of these, and converting between them. Another important aspect is the registration of persistent identifiers (PIDs) for data. GESIS uses DataCite DOIs for all datasets in the archive provided by da|ra, the DOI registration agency for social and economic data.
In this session, Wolfgang Zenk-Möltgen, Jan Schwalbach, and Kokila Jamwal will give an overview of the metadata standards and procedures used at the archive for documentation. They will also cover current developments in this area, including extensions regarding digital behavioural data.
Presenters:
Registration (via Zoom) |
Slides | Presentation on YouTube | MTE Playlist
The Lecture will be held in English.
Research data infrastructures (RDI) address the information needs of researchers when searching for existing data and when dealing with data they have collected themselves. In the past, it has been shown that domain-specific services are particularly popular among research communities. One of the reasons lies in the preselection of relevant topical data and further helpful information, as studies are often described only in general terms and thus it is difficult to obtain detailed information easily. On the other hand, domain-specific RDIs can employ the terminologies used in the corresponding research to describe the contents and methods more profoundly. In this session, Alexander Jedinger (GESIS), Marlene Hilgenstock (GESIS), and Pascal Kolkwitz-Anstötz (GESIS) will give an overview of the claims and benefits of the BMBF-funded project “data portal for racism and right-wing extremism research: DP-R|EX”. In addition, they will provide insights in the development and use of an own integrated data explorer and outline the documentation standards (metadata) that have been developed to support the purposeful search of topical data.
Presenters:
Registration (via Zoom) |
Slides | Presentation on YouTube | MTE Playlist
The Lecture will be held in English.
In recent years, the relevance of (research) data management (RDM) steadily increased. More and more funding agencies and publishers of academic journals now require systematic data management in the sense of Open Science and in accordance with the FAIR Data Principles. RDM-Training at GESIS was one of the first institutions addressing the professionalization of data management. Since 2013, we offer training, training materials, and guidelines as well as consultations on various topics of data management. In the context of social science (research) data, we pay special attention to research ethics and legal issues, support data producers in creating high-quality data and data documentation and promote data sharing for the purpose of re-use. In this session, Sebastian Netscher and Anja Perry will briefly introduce RDM-Training and our various activities, and outline data management in the social sciences and its challenges.
Presenters:
Registration (via Zoom) |
Slides | Presentation on YouTube | MTE Playlist
The Lecture will be held in English.
Not all microdata can be anonymised without losing too much detail. For some data, once sufficient detail is removed to make it anonymous, much of its utility is lost. Therefore, data that is not fully anonymised, is increasingly made available. Under data protection legislation, these data are considered ‘personal data’ and require appropriate safeguards. Trusted Research Environments (TREs) play an integral role in enabling safe access to sensitive data. In the earlier years of secure access, Safe Rooms – secured, physical locations - were the predominant access route. Safe Rooms have considerable advantages, not least because of the ability for secure data services to control almost all factors. Safe Rooms have one significant drawback – the burden on researchers to travel, sometimes long distances, to work at a specific location, a burden not all researchers are able to meet equally. This has led to exploring remote access options. The pandemic which led to a lengthy shutdown of Safe Room data access, has further pushed this agenda forward. The move towards easier, more flexible remote access options is a popular one with researchers but it comes with a dilemma for TREs – how to manage the differential risks of the different access routes. The 5 Safes Framework has been widely used to structure the decision-making processes in TREs. The Secure Data Center team at GESIS will explore how it can be utilized in managing the move to new access routes.
Presenters: