Policy makers need information about the nationâ€"ranging from trends in the overall economy down to the use by individuals of Medicareâ€"in order to evaluate existing programs and to develop new ones. This information often comes from research based on data about individual people, households, and businesses and other organizations, collected by statistical agencies. The benefit of increasing data accessibility to researchers and analysts is better informed public policy. To realize this benefit, a variety of modes for data accessâ€" including restricted access to confidential data and unrestricted access to appropriately altered public-use dataâ€"must be used. The risk of expanded access to potentially sensitive data is the increased probability of breaching the confidentiality of the data and, in turn, eroding public confidence in the data collection enterprise. Indeed, the statistical system of the United States ultimately depends on the willingness of the public to provide the information on which research data are based. Expanding Access to Research Data issues guidance on how to more fully exploit these tradeoffs. The panel's recommendations focus on needs highlighted by legal, social, and technological changes that have occurred during the last decade.

As digital technologies are expanding the power and reach of research, they are also raising complex issues. These include complications in ensuring the validity of research data; standards that do not keep pace with the high rate of innovation; restrictions on data sharing that reduce the ability of researchers to verify results and build on previous research; and huge increases in the amount of data being generated, creating severe challenges in preserving that data for long-term use. Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age examines the consequences of the changes affecting research data with respect to three issues - integrity, accessibility, and stewardship-and finds a need for a new approach to the design and the management of research projects. The report recommends that all researchers receive appropriate training in the management of research data, and calls on researchers to make all research data, methods, and other information underlying results publicly accessible in a timely manner. The book also sees the stewardship of research data as a critical long-term task for the research enterprise and its stakeholders. Individual researchers, research institutions, research sponsors, professional societies, and journals involved in scientific, engineering, and medical research will find this book an essential guide to the principles affecting research data in the digital age.

An intellectual property discussion is central to qualitative research projects, and ethical guidelines are essential to the safe accomplishment of research projects. Undertaking research studies without adhering to ethics may be dangerous to researchers and research subjects. Therefore, it is important to understand and develop practical techniques for handling ethics with a specific focus on qualitative projects so that researchers conducting this type of research may continue to use ethical practices at every step of the project. Data Analysis and Methods of Qualitative Research: Emerging Research and Opportunities discusses in detail the methods related to the social constructionist paradigm that is popular with qualitative research projects. These methods help researchers undertake ideal qualitative projects that are free from quantitative research techniques/concepts all while acquiring practical skills in handling ethics and ethical issues in qualitative projects. The chapters each contain case studies, learning outcomes, question and answer sections, and discuss critical research philosophies in detail along with topics such as ethics, research design, data gathering and sampling methods, research outputs, data analysis, and report writing. Featuring a wide range of topics such as epistemology, probability sampling, and big data, this book is ideal for researchers, practitioners, computer scientists, academicians, analysts, coders, and students looking to become competent qualitative research specialists.

The nature of survey research - The survey process - Sampling procedures - Questionnaire construction - The data collection stage - Coding practices - Designing survey - The process of data analysis - Single-variable statistics - Statistical inference for means - Two-variable tables - Measures of association - Control tables - Correlation and regression - Writing survey reports - Evaluating surveys - The ethics of polls.

Data management technology is rapidly progressing, and with it comes the need for stricter rules that ensure the information being collected is handled appropriately. Ensuring Research Integrity and the Ethical Management of Data is an essential resource that examines the best approaches for providing quality research, as well as how to effectively manage that information in a reputable way. Featuring extensive research on relevant topics such as qualitative data collection, data sharing, data misinterpretation, and intellectual property, this scholarly publication is an ideal reference source for academicians, students, and researchers interested in current trends and techniques in ethical research and data management.

A new era of innovation is enabled by the integration of social sciences and information systems research. In this context, the adoption of Big Data and analytics technology brings new insight to the social sciences. It also delivers new, flexible responses to crucial social problems and challenges. We are proud to deliver this edited volume on the social impact of big data research. It is one of the first initiatives worldwide analyzing of the impact of this kind of research on individuals and social issues. The organization of the relevant debate is arranged around three pillars: Section A: Big Data Research for Social Impact: • Big Data and Their Social Impact; • (Smart) Citizens from Data Providers to Decision-Makers; • Towards Sustainable Development of Online Communities; • Sentiment from Online Social Networks; • Big Data for Innovation. Section B. Techniques and Methods for Big Data driven research for Social Sciences and Social Impact: • Opinion Mining on Social Media; • Sentiment Analysis of User Preferences; • Sustainable Urban Communities; • Gender Based Check-In Behavior by Using Social Media Big Data; • Web Data-Mining Techniques; • Semantic Network Analysis of Legacy News Media Perception. Section C. Big Data Research Strategies: • Skill Needs for Early Career Researchers—A Text Mining Approach; • Pattern Recognition through Bibliometric Analysis; • Assessing an Organization’s Readiness to Adopt Big Data; • Machine Learning for Predicting Performance; • Analyzing Online Reviews Using Text Mining; • Context–Problem Network and Quantitative Method of Patent Analysis. Complementary social and technological factors including: • Big Social Networks on Sustainable Economic Development; Business Intelligence.

Sharing research data on public health issues can promote expanded scientific inquiry and has the potential to advance improvements in public health. Although sharing data is the norm in some research fields, sharing of data in public health is not as firmly established. In March 2015, the National Research Council organized an international conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa, to explore the benefits of and barriers to sharing research data within the African context. The workshop brought together public health researchers and epidemiologists primarily from the African continent, along with selected international experts, to talk about the benefits and challenges of sharing data to improve public health, and to discuss potential actions to guide future work related to public health research data sharing. Sharing Research Data to Improve Public Health in Africa summarizes the presentations and discussions from this workshop.

The Data Protection and Medical Research in Europe: PRIVIREAL series focuses on the 'Privacy in Research Ethics and Law' EC-funded project examining the implementation of Directive 95/46/EC on data protection in relation to medical research and the role of ethics committees in European countries. The series consists of five separate volumes following the complete development of the PRIVIREAL project. This volume relates to the first stage of the project regarding the implementation of the Data Protection Directive, in particular in the area of medical research. It contains an introduction and overview of this topic, keynote papers addressing specific questions on the subject, and a report on both the general implementation of the Directive and the implementation in relation to medical research in 26 European countries. The book will be invaluable for those people with an interest in data protection, medical research and their implications for each other. It lays open the actual situation across Europe, including both New Member States and Newly Associated Member States.