Watch the short video above and write down the various types of problems created by the ad hoc sharing arrangement for which the bear on the left opted. How would these problems have been mitigated if the bear had deposited his data in a data repository? While the bears are discussing quantitative data, would the challenges be the same for qualitative data?
Some of the problems created by the left bear’s ad hoc sharing arrangement include:
lots of inter-researcher communication which is inefficient;
the passage of a long period of time before the data are actually shared, in part because the left bear cannot locate them;
the format of the data is obsolete which temporarily prevents their use;
the data cannot be interpreted by the secondary user (Dr. Benign, the panda);
the original researcher-bear, not having documented the data, does not remember how to interpret the data and his co-author, who may remember, cannot be located. Had the left bear deposited his data (and complete documentation) in a data repository, they would have been more quickly accessible to, and more easily interpreted by Dr. Benign; for instance, curation would have entailed updating the format. Dr. Benign would likely face similar challenges if the data were qualitative.