Practical Help with Managing Data & Applying for GrantsDr Richard R. Plant & Dr Andrew Thompson

Data Management Planning & Storage for Psychology

project

What passes for a RDMP?• “Time to change! Using the transition from school to

university to promote healthy lifestyle habits in young people”

• “The research will develop and test a multi-device digital intervention that targets several health behaviours (i.e., fruit and vegetable intake, exercise, alcohol consumption, smoking) among young people during the transition from school to university”

• MRC, 24 months, £370k funded late 2011

3.7. What are the plans for data use, sharing and preservation?

• “On completion of the project, the datasets will be made available to appropriate potential data users via the project website which will include a description of the trial (e.g., design, measures), the content of the datasets (e.g., sample size, variables) and contact details. The datasets will not contain any personally identifiable data. Potential users will be required to sign a formal agreement regarding publication and intellectual property rights, in line with MRC guidelines. The datasets will be retained locally by the research team at the University of Sheffield.”

How can you help me?• Intro to our new one stop shop website...

• What does a RDM Plan even look like?

• I’m applying for a grant and need a Research Data Management Plan to apply. What tools can help me?

• My research council wants me to add this “metadata” stuff to my data and then share it!

• How do I backup over the short term – any ideas?

• DClinPsy Sharepoint document repository for data and site files (rather than a CD in a filing cabinet)

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04/10/23 © The University of Sheffield

The DMSPpsych project will establish a culture of data management planning, archiving, and ongoing reuse of data acquired as a result of psychological research within the Department of Psychology at The University of Sheffield.

We recognise it is often difficult and time consuming for the individual, research group or even department to follow a coordinated approach especially where there are no local or discipline specific exemplars to follow.

By tackling these issues at a grass roots level, on a one-to-one basis, we hope to provide support and foster an atmosphere of collaboration with regard to data management.

Mission statement

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Why?• You will no longer be able to apply for funding

unless you have a data management plan, take better care of your data and ultimately share it

• Increase your citations by at least 69%

• Increase your chances of further funding and collaboration

• “Backstop” your research papers – journals are likely to request datasets (Stapel fraud)

• You might want to reuse your own data!

• Universities need a better organizational memory

• Good for science, good for UK PLC

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Cognitive dissonance?

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Ahhh, that’s better

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That looks bad!

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Fail to plan,plan to fail

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/regenesis/pictures/These pictures were taken by Harvey Rutt

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Data loss will happen to you

• As surely as death and taxes – when & how

• Not just catastrophic events you should worry about:

• Dropping your laptop

• Hard drive failures

• Software updates

• Obsolescence/upgrades

• Poorly described data(metadata)

• Theft of equipment

• People move on

• Research trends (follow the money consequences)

• Overwriting data/versioning

• File formats

• Media degradation(CDR’s, memory sticks, SSD’s)

04/10/23 © The University of Sheffield Demo

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What does a RDM Plan even look like?

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04/10/23 © The University of Sheffield

Metadata: data about data• In the course of your working life as a professional Psychologist you will routinely generate data. By now you will have already generated varying

types and amounts. Some will be quantitative and some will be qualitative, some might be from traditional experiments, observational studies or clinical work.

• The common thread that links the data you generate is that it’s often rendered unusable in a frighteningly short amount of time. This is irrespective of the perceived importance at the time you collected it, did an analysis and wrote it up!

• Data can become unusable for a variety of reasons, e.g. data losses through hard drive failure, accidental deletion, computer upgrades, software that can read the data becomes obsolete or file formats change. However the most common reason is that you, as the person who generated the data in the first place, forget what it means! Or rather you forget how the data was coded which means you can no longer make sense of it. This is especially true if you are looking at the data in isolation without the written interpretation or publication that went alongside it.

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Metadata: data about data• By describing your data with metadata you effectively annotate it so

that you give it context and meaning. Metadata to all extents and purposes is data about data. Doing this isn’t as complicated as it sounds and it’s better to do it as you go along rather than see it as an additional onerous chore that’s done at the end of a project. It can be the simple things that help...

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Metadata: data about data• Start with something as simple as sensible filenames:

stats and graphs for 4 main conditions.sav

to

Burt Reading Test (1974) by 4 schools [8 year old pupils].sav

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Metadata: data about data• Use the tools you have available:

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Metadata: data about data• Use the tools you have available:

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Administrative metadata• This is simply the “who, when and how” the data was created

• The most common way of writing administrative metadata is to use the “Dublin Core DCMI Administrative Metadata” format. This is simply a set of “elements”, or sections, that you should aim to complete. A full list of the 15 elements is shown below.

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Administrative metadata

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Backing up over the short-term• Good practice suggests that you should have copies of your important

files in three separate locations. Often this means a copy at home on your laptop, a copy at work or on campus and a nowadays a copy in the cloud. By cloud we mean somewhere like Dropbox or other could based file storage accessed via the internet, e.g. LiveDrive, Mozy, SkyDrive and Live Mesh, Box, Carbonite, Jungle Disk, SpiderOak, SugarSync, Syncplicity and Apples iCloud amongst others.

• It is not a definitive guide and nor is it intended to provide guidance on long term archiving. Also it is not a guide to confidentiality, the Data Protection Act or anonymising personal data. It is purely about data security and preservation over the short term.

• Covers the CiCS approach to the cloud with a simple how to

• Covers confidentiality

• Introduces Dropbox as an alternative (on either managed desktops or staff machines)

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Backing up over the short-term• Easy to understand terminology with lots of screen grabs

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Backing up over the short-term• Doing the same thing in Dropbox

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Where can I get advice again?