Problems with Data Management in Anthropology

What is it about?

This forum discusses the Leiden Statement on Data Management in Anthropology and other qualitative forms of social research. This statement argues that ethnographic research materials cannot be dealt with by formal protocols of data management that are mostly derived from medical or psychological research. These models ignore the problems of the co-production and joint ownership of research materials with the people studied. They also ignore that research outcomes change over time, and that they can therefore not be made fully ethical by "prior and written informed consent", or always turned into anonymized "data". Finally, they mistakenly assume that qualitative researcher can ethically relinquish custody over these research materials: they always have to remain in the position to decide whether third parties can have access to it.

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Why is it important?

Universities, funding agencies and journals tend to judge the handling of research materials by qualitative scientists by means of the data management protocols of quantitative or experimental scientists. This creates situations where long established types of scientific research are declared unethical, or where researchers (especially those early in their careers) are frightened off by data management protocols from doing sensitive research. This especially harms doing research among people already marginalized by economic, political or legal elites.