L.Khakhulina

L.Kosova

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL DATA ARCHIVES ON SOCIALOGICAL RESEARCH STANDARDS (case of Russia)

Russian Sociological Data Archive is a new one: it was created in 2000 with finance support of the Ford Foundation. The idea was initiated by VCIOM (Russian Center for Public Opinion and Market Research), and the leading research centers – the Institute of Sociology of Russian Academy of Sciences, the Public Opinion Foundation, the Institute of Complex Sociological Research, ROMIR, the Institute of Economy and Organization of Industrial Production were also among those who helped this idea become a reality.

Although there have been several attempts to form an archive on sociological issues before, it was not until 1990-s that the necessary prerequisites for the realization of the project were actually jelled. The first prerequisite consisted in accumulating a practical experience of sociological research in accordance with international standards. At the moment there are some ten organizations that specialize in regular public opinion polls and do researches on various aspects of Russian mass perception and behavior. Also, there are a number of independent researchers and small research groups financed by national and foreign funds. The diversity of information sources gives rise to the problems of information safety, standardization and accessibility for later reference and secondary analysis.

At present RSDA stores more than 70 sociological surveys, fulfilled during the last decade. The archived data can be divided into 3 large groups. The first group comprises the monitoring type surveys conducted by leading sociological agencies. The second group of data consists of 5 joint files, based on similar questions asked in different monitoring surveys: VCIOM joint monitoring survey, Consumer Sentiments Index, 1995-96’ and 1999-2000’ Elections Research, Time budgets of rural population. The third, and final, group accounts for ISSP (International Social Survey Program) research. Although Russia first joined the program in 1991 RSDA stores all rounds. All files in the archive are of SPSS-format, and are available free of charge for the research purposes.

The data retrieval system is available at The system enables the user to look for the relevant data and to request it. The Archive passes data for research purposes and for teaching free of charge. The relations between RSDA and users are based on agreements in which the rights and liabilities of each party are specified.

There are two specific we confronted with in our work:

  • Poor experience in the data archiving in the country. There were no national or local archives of sociological data existed in Russiabefore.
  • Lack of skills in work with empiric data among research community.

This put special tasks on RSDA. First, it is to define standards for those who plan to deposit survey data. Following the standards researchers are expected to improve all procedures of data collecting and data describing. Second, RSDA has a mission to show importance and necessity of the stored data for the development of social science in Russia. Secondary analysis is not admired in Russia, because of quite common illusion that only data«collectedby a researcher herself” are trustworthy and valuable.

RSDA has to find special forms of dealing with the potential users and depositors and drawing attention of the research community to the role that archives play in the development of social studies. And we had invented a few. Among them - the special grant competition that has been conducted in order to support researchers producing analytical articles based on the secondary analysis of data stored in RSDA. Such competition increased the number of data requests on 25%.

In the future we believe the RSDA will become the basis of the national archive as an independent institution where social scholars could deposit their survey data and get essential information for doing research. Such institution promotes improving the quality of sociological studies and making one more step towards open civil society in Russia.

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