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Library Guides

Doctoral Researcher Development: Working With Data

A guide for Doctoral Researchers at University of Westminster

Research Data Management

Your research data are any objects, whether physical or digital, that you create in the course of your research. Proper research data management (RDM) is vital to ensure longevity, make data available for future reuse, and to comply with funder and institutional policies.

University of Westminster Guidance

The Research Knowledge and Exchange Office (RKEO) has information on their webpages covering the planning of data management, gathering and working with data, sharing and reusing, as well as archiving. You should make yourself familiar with the university's Research Data Management Policy.

The Research Data Management Officer holds training sessions which can be booked on the VRE.

For further information, email: research-data@westminster.ac.uk

RDM Toolkit for Researchers by Jisc

Jisc has built an RDM Toolkit for Researchers, featuring resource guides and links to training videos.

The RDM toolkit is themed according to the various stages in the research data lifecycle.

It is a great place to get started for those new to managing research data.

Research Data Life Cycle

Research Data Management FAQs

There are different tools that you can use for collecting data, depending on the type of data you are collecting and whether you are an undergraduate student, postgraduate student, doctoral researcher, or a University of Westminster staff member.

Undergraduate and Postgraduate Students

As a student you have access to Google Forms to create surveys and questionnaires. However, you should not use Google Forms to collect personal data, therefore you should consider how you can conduct your research by collecting anonymous data.

Note: You can collect sensitive data such as sex, gender, and health data as long as it cannot be combined to identify an individual. For example, by not collecting the name, or removing information about workplace etc. (any information that makes an individual identifiable). Some schools have licenses to use Qualtrics Surveys, information is available on the IT pages FAQS.

Your supervisor or tutor should be able to advise you on the ethics of data collection.

Doctoral Researchers

All doctoral researchers have access to Google Forms (for collecting anonymous data) and MS Forms (for when you are collecting personal data).

If you are a PhD student with a staff account, you can contact IT Service Desk to request access to Jisc Survey Tools.

Some schools have licenses to use Qualtrics Surveys, information is available on the IT pages FAQS.

See the University Websites, Surveys and Conferencing page for more detailed information.

If you are considering collecting sensitive or personal data but you do not have access to the Jisc Survey Tools or Qualtrics, please speak to your supervisor/tutor.

University of Westminster staff conducting research

Contact IT Service Desk to request access to Jisc Survey Tools.

See the University Websites, Surveys and Conferencing page for more detailed information.


Undergraduate and Postgraduate Students

If you are an undergraduate or postgraduate taught student, please speak to your supervisor or tutor. They should be best informed about the research ethics most pertinent to your subject area. SAGE Research Methods is a useful resource for information on how to conduct research. Log in to Sage Research Methods Core and search for “ethics”. You will find written resources and video content.

Doctoral Researchers

If you are a doctoral researcher, go to the Doctoral Researcher Development Programme ethics resources collected under The Ethical Researcher.

University of Westminster staff conducting research

If you are a staff member conducting research, go to the Research and Knowledge Exchange Ethics webpages.. You can also find video training resources in the Research & Knowledge Exchange Office Researcher Development Hub.

Social Media and Ethics

Before starting your research using social media, you need to consider the ethical implications

Here at Westminster, research using social media data where the research concerns users, is considered as if working with human participants in real life. Your research design is therefore subject to the same ethical considerations and ethical review as if you were collecting observational data in the field. For example, while many social media posts are in the public domain, they are not necessarily viewed as such by those who author them.

If you are an undergraduate or postgraduate student, your supervisor or tutor should be able to give you guidance on working with social media data.

The Research & Knowledge Exchange Office has a useful blog on using social media data responsibly in research. There are links to content and resources aimed at staff and doctoral researchers, but it also gives useful points for all staff and students to consider as well as further links and resources.

Using Social Media Data

SAGE Research Methods is a useful resource for information on how to conduct research. Log in to Sage Research Methods Core and search for “social media research.” You will find written resources and video content.

You can also search the Library Catalogue for more information on using Social Media for research.

For example, we have The Sage Handbook of Social Media Research Methods.

Doug Specht, Senior Lecturer and Director of Teaching and Learning in the School of Media and Communication at the University of Westminster, has also published guidance and step-by-step tutorials on Collecting, cleaning, and visualising Twitter data.

If you are an undergraduate or postgraduate student, your supervisor or tutor should be able to give you guidance with regards to ethics and recruiting participants, which is a part of research methods.

If you are a researcher or doctoral researcher recruiting participants for research, you should look at the Research Governance and Ethics Guidance.

SAGE Research Methods is a useful resource for information on how to conduct research. Log in to Sage Research Methods Core and search for “recruiting participants.” You will find written resources and video content.

Data minimisation is the principle of collecting personal data only for a specific purpose. It means that you should collect the minimum amount of personal data you need to answer your research question. You often do not need to collect personal data at all.

When working with social media data, you should also be mindful that people’s likenesses (faces), voices, and usernames are personal data (in addition to proper names, email addresses, or any other piece of information that could directly identify an individual). You should therefore be careful about the collection of information that might not directly identify an individual, but which could be combined with other data to identify them. This is particularly important if you are collecting “special category” data about a person’s sexual orientation or sex-life, health, racial or ethnic category, trade union membership, or political or religious beliefs.

Video: RDM for Doctoral Researchers

A 12 min video by Dr. Holly Ranger (Research Data Management Officer) introducing RDM for PhD students at UoW

Workshops

Training sessions on managing your research data and writing a data management plan are available via the Researcher Development Programme and the Doctoral Researcher Development Programme (academic skills). Please visit their websites to book a place on the sessions.

Blog Posts

Getting into the habit – a PhD student's perspective on RDM

Research in fiction through the lens of data management – a series of blog posts for researches who are new to RDM

Data Analysis

There are many online training courses available on various platforms to help you with your data analysis.

SPSS and NVivo software licenses are available via OnTheHub.