Developing a hub for e-Social Science in NZ

This started as a one year project to develop an advanced social statistics data service (hub) utilising BeSTGrid (link to: http://www.bestgrid.org) and other remote access technologies in New Zealand and overseas, to facilitate social science research and teaching. This was funded through the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC).
 

The primary aim of the project was to develop New Zealand’s research infrastructure in line with global best practice in social science data access and analysis, using recent IT-based developments in data archiving, data linking and networked data processing in order to create a distributed data archive with state-of-the-art cataloguing and access (as seen for example in Australia, the UK and Canada). This was complemented greatly by the establishment of BeSTGrid and our ability to collaborate with them and indeed become model users of their resources.
 

Secondary aims were:

• to enable the social science community to gain improved access to current and past data series/collections in their specialist areas
• to improve the speed and capacity for data cleaning and compilation, and dissemination of new surveys to students, researchers and policy makers
• to provide access to relevant data from comparable international studies.
   

Key components were:

1. Data acquisition and preservation – using international standards in protecting, enhancing and extending research investment value.
2. Awareness and usability – promoting data archive services use including seminar and training programmes.
3. Increasing data accessibility – delivered through secure Internet and BeSTGrid.
4. Analytical capability – providing the access point/hub and training required to analyse social data.
5. Workforce and demand – increasing the capability of the research workforce, both public and private, to analyse complex databases.
    

The data service was set up  as the New Zealand Social Science Data Service (NZSSDS) late in 2007 with a series of data sets from the New Zealand Election Study  in the archive at launch.

More data sets have since been added, mainly in the area of health, drawing from earlier work of COMPASS members.

• New Zealand Social Science Data Service (NZSSDS)
• New Zealand Election Study