QDR curates, preserves, and publishes empirical data associated with qualitative or multi-method research in the social sciences and cognate disciplines. Scholars from around the world and at any stage of their career are welcome to deposit data.
QDR prioritizes and actively seeks out data projects that comprise:
- Qualitative data, or data associated with mixed-method research with a strong qualitative component, that are associated with research in the social sciences or cognate disciplines
- Data associated with research that employs Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (ATI)
- Relevant, high-quality data as described below
QDR does not actively seek out, but generally accepts, data projects that:
- Are mostly quantitative, but contain qualitative data or are thematically linked to qualitative research
- Include data that are not associated with research from the social sciences or cognate disciplines but that are likely to be of interest to social scientists
QDR generally does not accept data projects that:
- Accompany research that is outside the social sciences and does not utilize social science data-generation techniques (e.g., images of crystals)
- Are too large for QDR to reasonably preserve, especially when the data are not of relevance to the QDR user community (e.g., multi-terabyte social media data available through other sources)
- Are entirely quantitative, with no qualitative component or other link to qualitative research
- Involve a clear violation of rules for ethical research (for instance, with regard to how researchers interacted with human participants)
- Are limited by an explicit stipulation in the researcher’s IRB application that the data will be destroyed after the end of the project or will not be shared with anyone outside of the researcher team. (In those cases QDR might assist an interested researcher in pursuing a potential IRB amendment and try to re-contact participants to request revised permissions to share the data.)
QDR also considers criteria relating to the intellectual value and quality of data projects (adapted from ICPSR)
- The data are not available anywhere else, or are not likely to be available elsewhere in the future.
- The data are in the public domain, the depositor can claim fair use exceptions to copyright, or the copyright owners agree to QDR’s terms of service.
- The data adhere to standards for privacy and confidentiality or depositors are willing to work with QDR to assure adherence.
- The documentation is complete or depositors are willing to complete documentation.