Experiences With Secondary Use of Qualitative Data—First Results of a Survey Carried out in the Context of a Feasibility Study Concerning Archiving and Secondary Use of Interview Data

Abstract

Acquisition and provision of quantitative research data as well as preparation and documentation of this data are principal tasks of the Central Archive for Empirical Social Research. A comparable institution, which systematically collects, archives, documents and provides qualitative data for secondary use on a national level does not currently exist in Germany. It is the sole responsibility of each researcher to take care of his/her own research material. In many cases data is kept in offices or at home, where it is generally not accessible to others and the long-term data preservation is uncertain. On the basis of these considerations, the German Research Foundation (DFG) financed a cooperation project of the Life Course Archive at the Graduate School of Social Sciences (University Bremen) and the Central Archive for Empirical Social Research (ZA), University of Cologne to explore the possibilities of providing an infrastructure for archiving qualitative data and to find out the needs of the scientific community for such an infrastructure. This article first introduces the feasibility study and then presents first results of a survey carried out within the project. In this context we will focus on different aspects of the practical experiences with the secondary use of qualitative data. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0501431