Data archive

A data achieve is a kind of archive, which builds, maintains and manages collections of machine readable data that describe activities in a society and which are collected by research or teaching activities.

Data archives have been criticized by Brittain (1989, pp. 99-100):

"Experimentation has produced enormous amount of data in the social sciences. Proponents of the method have been at the forefront in the analysis of the data, using statistical analysis since the 1920s, and many social scientists were just as keen as physical and biological scientists to use computers for data processing and analysis, when computers became widely available in the 1960s.

The Results of social science experimentation have been disappointing. When assessed in terms of the number of rules, principles, and verified theories produced, little has been achieved. When assessed in terms of the application of social science knowledge to the solution of social, political, and psychological problems, there is little demonstrable success; at best, the relationship between the results of research and the application of the results is tenuous, and often difficult to establish.
The lack of success of experimentation in the social sciences can be attributed to a combination of the following reasons:

• Unstable terminology

• Absence of operational definitions of concepts and variables

• Impossibility of identifying all the variables likely to influence the outcomes of experimentation.

• Problems in the control of the variables that can be identified

• Absence of good theory that can generate testable hypothesizes

• Fudging of the verification process of moving from data and observation to the substantiation of hypotheses, and in turn, the verification of theories.

The simple conclusion to be drawn is that data is not knowledge. However, those who support experimentation and controlled observation are sometimes difficult to persuade otherwise. The libraries of the world are full of documents containing unprocessed, and unusable data. The databank movement in the social sciences has perpetuated the mistaken belief that mountains of data are worthwhile, and that if enough is collected, analysed, and stored, benefits will result and the social sciences will progress. This belief is mistaken: it is characteristic of alchemists, or mystics, rather than scientists.

 
The first experiments in the social sciences took place in psychology laboratories in Germany in the 1870s. Over 100 years of social science experimentation has failed to produce a set of theories, principles and agreement. If the criteria used to evaluate scientific experimentation are applied to the social sciences, the latter must be judged to have failed"
 

Organizations:

DDA (Dansk Data Arkiv): http://www.sa.dk/dda/default.htm

IASSIST (The International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology) founded in 1974 in Toronto: http://www.iassistdata.org/

CESSDA (Committee of European Social Science Data Archives). Founded in Amsterdam, 1976: http://www.nsd.uib.no/cessda/

IFDO (International Federation of Data Organizations). Founded in Louvain-la-Neuve, 1977. http://www.ifdo.org/

SocioSite: Social Science Data Archives: http://www.sociosite.net/databases.php

Literature:

Brittain, J. M. (1989). Knowledge in the social sciences. International Journal of Information and Library Research, 1(2), 93-105.
 

Nielsen, P. (1988). DDAGUIDE - Dansk Data Arkivs søgebase for studiebeskrivelses-information (pp. 43-59 in: Informationssøgning og dokumentation inden for humaniora og samfundsvidenskab. Rapport fra et seminar 14.-16.oktober på Københavns Universitet. Kulturfremstødet Danmark-Frankrig 1987-1988. Redigeret af Barbara Melchior. København: Det kongelige Bibliotek).

Journal: DDA-Nyt. Odense: Dansk Data Arkiv. 
Danish data archives: http://www.sa.dk/sa/omarkiverne/english/dda.htm

Council of European Social Science Data Archives: http://www.nsd.uib.no/Cessda/

Se also: Data

Birger Hjørland

Last edited: 01-10-2008

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