Dissemination & Feedback to Data Originators

The 'originators of data' include all stakeholders who were involved in the data flow activity. This includes the donor and all other interested parties. If you thought of 'originators' as being mainly those from whom you collected the raw data, then that is fine, because they are often a group that is omitted, or only considered at an earlier stage in the data flow. You (the researcher) are also an interested party, so the dissemination should include a mechanism for receiving feedback, so you can update your plan of activities to reflect progress.

We once again include a link here to the Survey Quality Assessment Framework in which Chapter 9 includes a checklist for the Dissemination of Survey Products.

Data and Document Archive

Generally when researchers consider dissemination, they tend to think in terms of results and published papers. We would encourage you to also consider the data and other project documentation. If you have managed your data in a DDS (Data & Document Store) throughout the project, then creating an archive for your project is relatively straightforward.

As an example we have a Monitoring & Evaluation Archive for the Starter Pack and Targeted Input Programmes in Malawi between 1999 and 2003. This archive was produced by the Statistical Services Centre under contract for the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) in March 2004.

Dataverse

Another option for archiving is Dataverse. The Dataverse Network Project is based at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) at Harvard University. A Dataverse Network is an application to publish, share, reference, extract and analyse research data. As an example the Statistical Services Centre has created a Dataverse hosted at Harvard which currently contains some of the data and documentation from the Starter Pack Evaluation Programme in Malawi 1999-2000.

We are currently working on a series of video demonstrations showing how to use Dataverse for archiving your studies. The first two of these vidoes are available here:

 

Last updated: 10 February, 2012