Welcome to the New Resource Roundup, a series dedicated to highlighting Falvey’s new databases and acquisitions that help make you an excellent researcher, student, and citizen!

By Jutta Seibert, Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement

Do you conduct and publish social science research? If so, do you share your data? The National Science Foundation and several other national bodies have suggested or required that investigators make their research data and supporting materials available to other researchers via a public repository. If you aren’t sure where or how to prepare and deposit your data, Falvey Library can help!

Villanova University recently became a member of QDR (Qualitative Data Repository), a repository that archives and publishes data generated through qualitative and multi-method research methods in the social and health sciences, law, education, and the humanities. QDR is funded by the National Science Foundation and hosted by the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry, a unit of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. The QDR website provides extensive guidance for managing, sharing, citing, and reusing qualitative data.

Founded in 2014, the repository initially focused on political science data, but has since expanded to welcome qualitative and multi-method data from a range of fields. QDR’s main objectives are to share research data, to facilitate transparency of evidence-based claims, to enrich instruction through access to well-documented data, and to contribute to a shared understanding of social science research methods. The types of data deposited include text, images, audio, video, maps, and computer-assisted qualitative data (CAQDAS). While still comparatively modest in size with fewer than 50 data projects, QDR is expected to grow quickly.

A free QDR account is required to access and deposit data. Villanova faculty, staff, and students have access to a range of support services to assist with the storing and sharing of data.

Interested faculty, staff, and students should be aware that the University is also a member of ICPSR, the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. While quantitative data dominate this archive, it also includes qualitative data and is far larger with close to 800 member institutions. Faculty, staff, and students of member institutions may deposit their data in ICPSR as well as download and reuse ICPSR data.