Data production

Systematic research data management should not only focus on archiving and accessing data. It must also always take the process of data collection into account. The documentation and quality assurance of research data is particularly challenging in the social, behavioural, educational, and economic sciences for various reasons. First, empirical research utilises a very broad spectrum of data types, including both structured data, e.g., data collected in surveys, and unstructured data such as video, audio, and textual data. Secondly, the above-mentioned research disciplines traditionally use data generated outside of science, e.g., administrative data or, more recently, observational, behavioural, and tracking data. In the latter case, the methodological quality is less transparent and often requires additional steps to render the data useful for science. This field of action therefore aims at further increasing the quality of data production by establishing and continuously improving RDM in the social, behavioural, educational, and economic sciences.