This paper presents a recent synthesis of the benefits, challenges, and approaches to share and re-use qualitative data in the context of interdisciplinary research that address complex questions related to sustainability and... [ view full abstract ]
This paper presents a recent synthesis of the benefits, challenges, and approaches to share and re-use qualitative data in the context of interdisciplinary research that address complex questions related to sustainability and human-environment interactions. Researchers in many disciplines, both social and natural sciences, have a long history of collecting and analyzing qualitative data to answer questions that have many dimensions, to interpret other research findings, and to characterize processes that are not easily quantified. Qualitative data is increasingly being used in socio-environmental systems research and related interdisciplinary efforts to address complex sustainability challenges. There are many scientific, descriptive and material benefits to be gained from sharing and re-using qualitative data, some of which reflect the broader push toward open science, and some of which are unique to qualitative research traditions. However, although open data availability is increasingly becoming an expectation in many fields and methodological approaches that work on socio-environmental topics, there remain many practical, epistemological, and ethical challenges associated the sharing and re-use of qualitative data.
The paper offers an integrated framework for thinking how different levels of access and levels of processing for qualitative data can balance the potential benefits with the challenges and limitations to sharing qualitative data for re-use. The framework reflects established data access protocols for many types of sensitive human subjects data, and borrows from earth sciences the notion of levels of data processing and associated possible re-use depending on processing. The application of this framework can help researchers identify possible and appropriate ways to share qualitative data, as well as ways to re-use existing qualitative data to ask new, often interdisciplinary research questions. The paper ends by reflecting on the social and scientific reasons for considering sharing and re-using qualitative data, including an interest in increasing transparency in the research process to increase the legitimacy of social scientific findings for the general public, and an increasing interest and pressure to leverage all available information and knowledge to address complex sustainability challenges.
