Practical Help with Managing Data & Applying for Grants Dr Richard R. Plant & Dr Andrew Thompson Data Management Planning & Storage for Psychology project

What passes for a RDMP? Time to change! Using the transition from school to university to promote healthy lifestyle habits in young people The research will develop and test a multi-device digital intervention that targets several health behaviours (i.e., fruit and vegetable intake, exercise, alcohol consumption, smoking) among young people during the transition from school to university MRC, 24 months, £370k funded late What are the plans for data use, sharing and preservation? On completion of the project, the datasets will be made available to appropriate potential data users via the project website which will include a description of the trial (e.g., design, measures), the content of the datasets (e.g., sample size, variables) and contact details. The datasets will not contain any personally identifiable data. Potential users will be required to sign a formal agreement regarding publication and intellectual property rights, in line with MRC guidelines. The datasets will be retained locally by the research team at the University of Sheffield.

How can you help me? Intro to our new one stop shop website... What does a RDM Plan even look like? Im applying for a grant and need a Research Data Management Plan to apply. What tools can help me? My research council wants me to add this metadata stuff to my data and then share it! How do I backup over the short term – any ideas? DClinPsy Sharepoint document repository for data and site files (rather than a CD in a filing cabinet) 01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield The DMSPpsych project will establish a culture of data management planning, archiving, and ongoing reuse of data acquired as a result of psychological research within the Department of Psychology at The University of Sheffield. We recognise it is often difficult and time consuming for the individual, research group or even department to follow a coordinated approach especially where there are no local or discipline specific exemplars to follow. By tackling these issues at a grass roots level, on a one-to-one basis, we hope to provide support and foster an atmosphere of collaboration with regard to data management. Mission statement

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Why? You will no longer be able to apply for funding unless you have a data management plan, take better care of your data and ultimately share it Increase your citations by at least 69% Increase your chances of further funding and collaboration Backstop your research papers – journals are likely to request datasets (Stapel fraud) You might want to reuse your own data! Universities need a better organizational memory Good for science, good for UK PLC

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Cognitive dissonance?

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Ahhh, thats better

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield That looks bad!

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Fail to plan, plan to fail These pictures were taken by Harvey Rutt

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Data loss will happen to you As surely as death and taxes – when & how Not just catastrophic events you should worry about: Dropping your laptop Hard drive failures Software updates Obsolescence/upgrades Poorly described data (metadata) Theft of equipment People move on Research trends (follow the money consequences) Overwriting data/versioning File formats Media degradation (CDRs, memory sticks, SSDs)

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Demo

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield What does a RDM Plan even look like?

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Metadata: data about data In the course of your working life as a professional Psychologist you will routinely generate data. By now you will have already generated varying types and amounts. Some will be quantitative and some will be qualitative, some might be from traditional experiments, observational studies or clinical work. The common thread that links the data you generate is that its often rendered unusable in a frighteningly short amount of time. This is irrespective of the perceived importance at the time you collected it, did an analysis and wrote it up! Data can become unusable for a variety of reasons, e.g. data losses through hard drive failure, accidental deletion, computer upgrades, software that can read the data becomes obsolete or file formats change. However the most common reason is that you, as the person who generated the data in the first place, forget what it means! Or rather you forget how the data was coded which means you can no longer make sense of it. This is especially true if you are looking at the data in isolation without the written interpretation or publication that went alongside it.

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Metadata: data about data By describing your data with metadata you effectively annotate it so that you give it context and meaning. Metadata to all extents and purposes is data about data. Doing this isnt as complicated as it sounds and its better to do it as you go along rather than see it as an additional onerous chore thats done at the end of a project. It can be the simple things that help...

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Metadata: data about data Start with something as simple as sensible filenames: stats and graphs for 4 main conditions.sav to Burt Reading Test (1974) by 4 schools [8 year old pupils].sav

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Metadata: data about data Use the tools you have available:

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Metadata: data about data Use the tools you have available:

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Administrative metadata This is simply the who, when and how the data was created The most common way of writing administrative metadata is to use the Dublin Core DCMI Administrative Metadata format. This is simply a set of elements, or sections, that you should aim to complete. A full list of the 15 elements is shown below.

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Administrative metadata

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Backing up over the short-term Good practice suggests that you should have copies of your important files in three separate locations. Often this means a copy at home on your laptop, a copy at work or on campus and a nowadays a copy in the cloud. By cloud we mean somewhere like Dropbox or other could based file storage accessed via the internet, e.g. LiveDrive, Mozy, SkyDrive and Live Mesh, Box, Carbonite, Jungle Disk, SpiderOak, SugarSync, Syncplicity and Apples iCloud amongst others. It is not a definitive guide and nor is it intended to provide guidance on long term archiving. Also it is not a guide to confidentiality, the Data Protection Act or anonymising personal data. It is purely about data security and preservation over the short term. Covers the CiCS approach to the cloud with a simple how to Covers confidentiality Introduces Dropbox as an alternative (on either managed desktops or staff machines)

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Backing up over the short-term Easy to understand terminology with lots of screen grabs

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Backing up over the short-term Doing the same thing in Dropbox

01/04/2014© The University of Sheffield Where can I get advice again?