Transcript presentation

Social Science Data Archiving and
Needs of the Public Sector: the
Case of Estonia
Rein Murakas
Andu Rämmer
University of Tartu, Estonia
Estonian Social Science Data Archive (ESSDA)
Social science data archiving in
Estonia: pre-history
• In the former Soviet Union, and especially in Estonia,
conducting of empirical social studies was possible from
the 1960-ies
• Teaching of sociological disciplines was started at the end
of the 1980-ies
• After re-establishing of Estonian independence, in 1993 a
team of sociologists, psychologists, political scientists and
human geographers from the University of Tartu made up
an initiative group for creating a data bank on social
sciences and began to work out the strategy of saving and
usage of the research materials collected by the Estonian
social scientists during the previous decades.
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Social science data archiving in
Estonia: establishing of ESSDA
• 1994-1996 transferring old datasets from Soviet
times supported by Higher Education Support
Program (Soros Foundations)
• 1996 – official establishing of ESSDA as
interdisciplinary centre of the Faculty of Social
Sciences of Tartu University and as a national
social science data bank
• In 1997 ESSDA became a full member of the
European Council of Social Science Data Archives
- CESSDA
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Social science data archiving in Estonia:
ESSDA’s post-establishing time
• Problems of financing (mostly small
projects)
• Lack of tradition to share data among social
scientists
>>> the main task for ESSDA was to continue
existing
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Social scientists and data usage in
Estonia
• The number of real social scientists in Estonia is about
100-300 (depending how to define social sciences ???), 3050 small research groups
• Local data only (except the narrow branch of historical
analysis of former Soviet Union) are not good basis for
international peer-reviewed publications (currently main
criteria in evaluation of social sciences in Estonia)
• Research groups are using more public data from different
comparative surveys (European Social Survey etc), general
statistical data and data collected by joint projects with
international parners
>>> In the current situation there cannot exist very high
demand for data from data archive’s traditional clients
To survive in this situation the change of paradigm is needed
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Alternative clients: public sector
• Estonian public sector in 2008: about 130
000 people (34 000 in state-level central
institutions), about a half of them with
higher education
• It is difficult to say how many of these
people are “analysts” who need social
science data, but in any case the number is
much higher than that of social scientists
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Base for using social information by
public sector
• The significance of using social information in
legislation is stressed in Estonian public on the
level of different development programs in the
past years
• The real situation based on surveys (Kasemets
2009)suggests: there is no intensive use of social
science data
• Possible changes are connected with the need for
higher effectiveness of public sector (especially
due to budget cuts) and also with realising
different development projects financed from
European structural funds
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Public sector’s current data needs
• Currently the main interest in public sector is
having information about the conducted applied
research projects
• In Estonia, the results of applied research projects
(mostly this means research reports, not research
data) financed by the public sector should be
publicly available
• Reports were published on webpages of different
public sector institutions, finding needed
information is extremely difficult
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Institutional barriers
• But ESSDA’s idea to establish metainformation
database about research projects wasn’t financially
supported because every institution needs its own
specific information(for example, an overview about
research projects connected with higher education,
multicultural problems etc)
• The current solution: ESSDA is establishing a
metainformation database topic-by topic depending on
financing. That means: actually one database will be
established, but different user interfaces (for
educational surveys, for cultural surveys etc).
Perspective: NESSTAR-based metainformation
database covering all directions
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Additional data needs
• If reports are insufficient there is generally no interest from
the public sector representatives to analyse data themselves
(problems with skills, software etc). At the same time, they
as a rule do not need complex secondary analyses, but
quick answers to very concrete questions
• Payment problems (especially in current situation when
expenses of the public sector were cut)
>>> ESSDA’s solution (not realised yet): to establish
analytical service for commenting survey results and
simple analyses based on different research data
Possibility to use graduate students
At least first time needs for financial support (to establish a
tradition) in perspective can be self-financed
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Perspective connected with teaching
• The other direction to meet the demand of the public sector is
teaching of general principles of data archiving to social science
students
• A large part of social science students are after graduating entering
the public sector
• At the University of Tartu every social science student (excluding
law students) is getting at least some information about social
science data archives and ideas of secondary analysis in
introductory social science courses. There are also special data
archiving study courses for sociologists.
• In perspective, when our current students will start working in key
positions in the public sector, they can better understand possibilities
of secondary analysis based on data archiving and also can be more
competent in using of resources offered by the data archive.
• It is also possible to offer knowledge about data archiving to the
current public sector analysts (for example, as blocks inside special
courses about methodology and research design)
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Thank you!
Questions, please!
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