Experiences with SharePoint/Groove?

One of the issues arising from this project is the practicalities of working either off-site or across institutions, namely how can researchers facilitate effective control of data and data collections when they are based in different locations or working away from their institution. One potential solution that has been suggested in the course of our data management interviews is Microsoft SharePoint 2010/Groove. I am interested in following up on this. So, does anyone have experience of working with SharePoint 2010/Groove? I'm interested in hearing about it's performance from a data management perspective - particularly in terms of shared workspaces, remote access, version control, and data security. Does it work? Does it work well? Is it easy to use and adapt to? What doesn't work well, what are the bugs? What could it do better? I'd be grateful for any insights and testimonials.

Last question...social science?

Social science
"the study of society and the manner in which people behave and impact on the world around us and includes disciplines such as economics, law, sociology, psychology, business studies, education, politics and international studies."

UK Strategy for Data Resources for Social and Economic Research 2009-2012, p.8

And a data collection is...?

Data collection
A data collection is typically comprised of three components: data, documentation and metadata. Occasionally, a fourth component of code exists. Data collections are typically organised by reference to a particular survey or research topic and cover a specific geographic area and time period.

UK Data Archive (2010), UK Data Archive Preservation Policy, pp.14-15

Well, what's documentation then?

Documentation
Documentation is that portion of a data collection that is required in order to re-use data. It commonly covers the subjects of sampling design, methods of data collection, questionnaire/interview design, structure of the data files, lists of variables and coding schemes, details of weighting, confidentiality and anonymisation, and provenance of any secondary data used. It also includes licence arrangements and all materials obtained through the original negotiation and data deposit, as well as post-deposit information created during preservation and ingest activities. The terms metadata and documentation are often used interchangeably and there is overlap between the two, though documentation tends to have a structure that is specific to each data collection.

UK Data Archive (2010), UK Data Archive Preservation Policy, pp.14-15

Ok, so data mangagement...fine, but what is/are data?

Data
Data are all the material, regardless of format, which are intended to be analysed. As part of datasets, they are the primary element of a data collection. More precise definitions of data vary according to context. Quantitative data may refer to just the matrices of numbers or words that comprise a data file, but may also cover other information (metadata) held within a statistical package data file, such as variable labels, code labels and missing value definitions. Qualitative data might include interview transcripts as well as audio and video recordings (analogue or digital).

UK Data Archive (2010), UK Data Archive Preservation Policy, pp.14-15

Progress report

This blog was intended as an experiement. The problem I've found in maintaining it was that it was difficult to be informative about the progress of the project and the challenges and problems we were encountering, and maintain a level of confidentiality as to who and where we were encountering these challenges and problems. Twitter takes care of the informative aspect, while this blog was seeming more like a commentary on the standard of spreads and hospitality provided by centres and programmes (which by the way has been excellent).

 

However, we are around mid-point. Last week our progress report was approved and arising from it we reported three main themes emerging from project in terms of outputs and training.

• Data ownership. A lack of awareness about who owns primary data, and a lack of consideration about the implications of using secondary data in terms of licences and copyright.
• A need to devise strategies and tools for working across institutions.
• Difficulty in getting good data from centres and programmes on data management costs.

For a richer explination of these themes we have produced a report on current data management practices in the social sciences

 

Our next challenge is to devise centre specific strategies to address these themes, but stratagies that can also have a generic application for social science data investments.

Meeting CRESC

Today we visited the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at the University of Manchester. CRESC is an ESRC funded Research Centre analysing socio-cultural change. Its research projects cover quantitative (longitudinal survey analysis) and qualitative (ethnography, interviewing, audio and visual data).

Three interesting issues emerged from our meeting that create interesting areas to consider. First, data collection is not central to its mission. Outside of qualitative work, their projects tend to generate data from existing data; this produces a lot of "derived" data. This led to an ongoing discussion on the question of what counts as data.

The second issue was that the organisational attitude within CRESC is that it is project governed. This is a reflection of the nature of the centre in working across different disciplines with different research norms and values.

Finally, there is CRESC's own interest in the theme of the "social life of methods". This looks at how methods are themselves an agent of social change. An interest was expressed in following our project closely; effectively studying us. Interesting.