Giving structure to the "everything else" box: Creating curation standards for qualitative data

Abstract

To produce high-quality data for future use, Curators must be both proactive in setting FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse) standards and flexible in allowing curation standards to evolve alongside methodological and technological advances. This is especially pertinent when working with qualitative and mixed-methods data, which can vary immensely in structure and form depending on the study, even when researchers are willing to share these data. Standards at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) for curating qualitative data have evolved over time to account for the varying types of data ingested while building consistency in workflows for Curators and in the data sharing experience for end users more familiar with quantitative data curation. We first describe the factors we consider when suggesting curation tasks grouped by intensity ('curation levels') specifically for qualitative data. Building on these factors, we then propose our levels of qualitative data curation. Finally, we briefly discuss how technological advances may impact our curation standards in the future.