Ethics, archives and data sharing in qualitative research

Abstract

This article investigates dilemmas in the archiving and sharing of qualitative data in educational research, critically engaging with practices and debates from across the social sciences. Ethical, epistemological and methodological challenges are examined in reference to open access agendas, the politics of knowledge production, and transformations in research practices in the era of data management. We first consider practical and interpretive decisions in archiving qualitative data, then map current policy and regulatory frameworks governing research data management, taking Australia as a case-study. We argue that governance and protocols for data sharing have not attended sufficiently to the distinctive ethical and methodological dimensions and knowledge claims of qualitative research. Instead, approaches associated with quantitative data are extrapolated in ways which construct an imaginary of decontextualised data, abstracted from the conditions of its production. We further argue for more critical attention to the double-edged affordances and ambivalent effects of data sharing and openness and to how data archives are imagined, constructed and curated. This includes greater acknowledgement of the affective and temporal dynamics involved in data archiving, understanding them as practices of (re)invention that also curate ‘archives for the future’ and help to foster an historicising imaginary in educational research.

Keywords:

• Data sharing
• archives
• qualitative research
• methodology
• open research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This work has included the development of a new Studies of Childhood, Education and Youth (SOCEY) archival repository and website (https://socey.hasscloud.net.au/), designed to provide a model and explore debates and possibilities surrounding qualitative research sharing and archiving in the humanities and social sciences.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council, Future Fellowship, ‘Youth Identity and Educational Change in Australia since 1950: Digital Archiving, Re-using Qualitative Data and Histories of the Present’ [grant number FT110100646, Julie McLeod].

Notes on contributors

Julie McLeod

Julie McLeod is Professor of Curriculum, Equity and Social Change, University of Melbourne and researches in the history and sociology of education, focussing on youth, gender and educational reform. Recent publications include Uneven Space-Times of Education: Historical Sociologies of Concepts, Methods and Practices, (2018); Rethinking Youth Wellbeing, (2015) and; The Promise of the New and Genealogies of Educational Reform (2015). See juliemcleod.net.

Kate O’Connor

Kate O’Connor is a lecturer in education at La Trobe University, Australia. Her research is concerned with digital transformations in higher education, with a particular focus on issues relating to curriculum, policy and governance. It engages with questions relating to the impact of new management practices on education and curriculum construction, the understandings and assumptions about knowledge and students evident in new policies and practices, and the implications and opportunities of new research data management practices for qualitative research.