Blogs

Archiving and Accessing Qualitative Data:  
An all-island perspective
 
Date: Thursday 26 January 2012 
Time: 10am to 2pm 
Location: TCD School of Nursing & Midwifery, D’Olier Street, Dublin 2 
Cost: €25 
 
Places are limited to members so book now at
www.childrensresearchnetwork.org 
 
 
Event Summary
There is a growing body of qualitative research data being made available in data archives in both Ireland and the UK.  Examples of Irish qualitative data currently available for further analysis include Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) and Life Histories and Social Change in 20th Century Ireland.   The Timescapes Research Programme, at the University of Leeds, hosts a wide variety of economic and social research data relevant to child and family researchers; data which is available to researchers in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.  Access to this data provides researchers with greater opportunities to explore the issues that affect children, their families and their communities and which may ultimately contribute to informing children's policy. In this the second master class of the Children's Research Network for Ireland and Northern Ireland, participants will learn about the various qualitative datasets that are publicly-available for research purposes in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
 
Key speakers
Dr Jane Gray from NUI Maynooth will explain the background to the establishment of Irish Qualitative
Data Archive (IQDA). She will look at the processes and procedures involved in lodging and accessing data in the archive and the criteria for assessing access requests.
Brian Merriman from the Children’s Research Centre at Trinity College Dublin will provide details of the Growing Up in Ireland qualitative data available from IQDA, and will discuss his experience of preparing and lodging the GUI data in the archive.
Dr Tara Murphy, as research manager for Childhood Development Initiative (CDI), Tara was responsible for preparing CDI qualitative evaluation data for lodging with IQDA; Tara will discuss her experience of this process. 
Brenda Phillips from the Timescapes Research Programme at the University of Leeds will describe the type of data that is collected and how researchers can access this data.
 

The Growing Up in Ireland Research Conference 2011, which will take place on Thursday 1st December 2011 at the D4 Berkeley Hotel, Lansdowne Rd, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4
The conference will be opened by Ms. Frances Fitzgerald T.D., Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, who will launch some Key Findings from the recently completed Infant Cohort (at 3 years)  as well as some of the first longitudinal findings from the study.
The Keynote speaker is Professor Edward Melhuish, Professor of Human Development at Birkbeck, University of London and Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Education, University of London. He is an internationally recognised expert in the study of child development and childcare and has extensive experience with longitudinal studies. His research interests include child development, parenting, childcare and early education.
A total of 24 papers will be presented at the conference by researchers from a wide range of third level and research institutions. These will be based on data from Growing Up in Ireland’s Child and Infant Cohorts and will focus on a range of topics including health, parenting, education and childcare.
Early booking is encouraged. Further details are available at www.growingup.ie   
 
 

Launch of Qualitative Key Findings from the Child Cohort and Workshop on GUI Data Lodged at the Irish Qualitative Data Archive

Date: Thursday 22nd September 2011
Time: 10am
Location: Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin

You are cordially invited to the Growing Up in Ireland launch of the Qualitative Key Findings from the Child Cohort by the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald, T.D. The event will take place at 10am on Thursday, 22nd September, at the Long Room Hub, TCD.

This latest research from Growing Up in Ireland draws on in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with 120 nine-year-old children and their parents. These families are participating in and were selected from the larger Growing Up in Ireland quantitative study which is tracking the lives of 8,500 nine-year-old children.
Workshop on GUI Data at IQDA
The event will also mark the archiving and availability to researchers of the Anonymised Qualitative Data from Wave 1 of the Child Cohort now lodged in the Irish Qualitative Data Archive (IQDA).
The initial launch event will be followed at 11.30am by a workshop session outlining the method used in the data collection for this phase of the study as well as a presentation on how researchers can access and use the data.

RSVP: Elizabeth Ryan at gui_qual@esri.ie by Monday 19th September 2011

Please indicate whether you would like to attend the launch only or both the launch and the workshop
 
Growing Up in Ireland is a Government study. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs is funding it in association with the Department of Social Protection and the Central Statistics Office. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs is overseeing and managing the Study, which is being carried out by a consortium of researchers led by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and Trinity College Dublin.

Speakers include: Alistair Thomson (author of Moving
Word of Mouth:  Oral History Practice and Preservation in Ireland
 
Inaugural Conference of the Oral History Network of Ireland
16/17 September 2011 in the Parade Tower, Kilkenny
Speakers include: Alistair Thomson (author of Moving Stories and Anzac Memories) and Guy Beiner (author of Remembering the Year of the French).
 
Discussions with oral history practitioners on:
- the practice, status and financing of oral history in Ireland 
- the ethics of oral history projects 
- the need for an oral history archive.
 
Workshops:  Doing Oral History and Using Oral History for Research Purposes.
For further information see: 
http://oralhistorynetwork.wordpress.com/
Booking is essential. 

There is an interesting discussion about securing ethical approval for social network research on orgtheory.net
http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/unusual-irb-requests/#comments
 

There are three upcoming seminars which will be of interest to those hoping to archive their qualitative data.
 Wednesday, November 24th 2010
Ethics review system and researching minors
Dr Arja Kuula
(IQDA/NIRSA)
Finland has recently established an ethics review system which will be common to all universities. The presentation will focus specifically on research with children and underage young people. In Finland it is not assumed that researchers should always request a separate consent from a guardian for research involving minors. The difficult balance between the principles of autonomy and protection when aiming to minimise harm to those affected by research will be discussed
Venue : NIRSA seminar room, top floor Iontas building. 4 pm -5.30 pm

 
Thursday, November 25th 2010
Should we reconsider our ethics?
(Department of Sociology, NUIM)
Dr Arja Kuula
Finnish Social Science Data Archive/University of Tampere, Finland
Venue : TBC
When rejecting the archiving of qualitative interviews, researchers mainly invoke the confidentiality of the interview situation. Researchers tend to define the interview relationship as something unpredictable and private, and interviewees as participants in need of protection. According to the experiences of Finnish Social Science Data archive the interviewees themselves define the relationship as an institutional one aiming to foster science. The participants also value the idea of archiving their experiences for future research. So should we move beyond the ethical impasse of ethical objection to data archiving?
Arja Kuula has a PhD in Sociology and works as a development manager in the Finnish Social Science Data Archive. She is responsible for the archiving processes of qualitative data and information service on research ethics, privacy protection and copyright issues relating to both quantitative and qualitative data. In 2006, Kuula published a handbook on research ethics and legislation regulating data collection
and re-use. Kuula has been a member of the Finland's National Advisory Board on Research Ethics and she chaired 2008 a working group to make a plan for ethics review system in the humanities and social sciences in Finland.
 
Tuesday the 30th of November

The RAcCER Project, a joint initiative of the Irish Qualitative Data Archive and  Tallaght West Childhood Development Initiative (CDI) would like to invite you to

"The trouble with sharing: best practice in archiving qualitative data"

9.30 am - 1.00 am
Centre for Effective Services Services
9 Harcourt Street, Dublin 2
RSVP aileen.ocarroll@nuim.ie by Friday the 26th of November

RAcCER: Re-use and Archiving of Complex Community-Based Evaluation Research