Establishment of a research data centre

DeZIM Research Community

Project description:

In the course of the structural project, the question should be clarified which functions a research data centre at the DeZIM Institute should fulfil in the medium to long term and which structures should be created to enable the processing of these tasks in the long term. To this end, three main tasks were identified, which were to be further specified and concretised within the framework of the project: (1) archiving data; (2) providing information on data in migration and integration research and (3) methodological advice.

(1) Archiving of data

The archiving of data refers to all data collected at the DeZIM Institute itself or in the institutes of the DeZIM community on issues of migration and integration research. Compared to a general data archive, the establishment of a specific FDZ in the field of migration and integration research increases the visibility of the data and promotes and facilitates the use of the data for secondary analyses. In the future, the service will also be extended to other data sets in migration and integration research that were not collected and recorded in the indirect environment of DeZIM, if the respective data producers so desire.

(2) Provision of information on migration and integration research data

In addition, DeZIM.fdz is to be an information centre for empirical integration and migration research, which will provide relevant information on the studies archived at DeZIM.fdz. In addition, basic data on other studies that are not archived at DeZIM.fdz will also be made available. With this broad orientation, the FDZ is intended to be a central contact point for both the members of the DeZIM community and the broader scientific public, where information on a large number of already existing studies in this subject area can be obtained.

(3) Methods consulting

Finally, the DeZIM.fdz will also provide methodological advice. The team at the FDZ sees itself primarily as an intermediary between data producers of the studies stored at the FDZ and data consumers. For example, so-called "Meet the Data" workshops are planned, in which data producers present their data and the associated analysis options. In addition, workshops on specific analysis methods are to be offered, which will then be taught in a practice-oriented manner on selected data sets stored at DeZIM.fdz (e.g. panel analysis with longitudinal data sets from migration and integration research). If necessary, external speakers will be invited for this purpose. Furthermore, DeZIM.fdz should offer or arrange methodological advice for primary data collection projects based at the DeZIM Institute or in the DeZIM community.

In addition to these core tasks, the staff of the DeZIM.fdz will conduct their own independent research, whereby the data archived at the DeZIM.fdz will also be evaluated for this purpose. This guarantees a good knowledge of the data stock available at the FDZ and thus has a positive effect on advising users. And finally, the independent research of the staff makes it possible to identify research gaps, which are then recursively reported back to the participating institutions of the DeZIM community or the DeZIM Institute in order to initiate new research work.

Participating partners: Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research (BIM), Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES)

Funding: Federal Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (Third-party funding)