Open Qualitative and Sensitive Data

This interactive training session is designed for social science PhD students working with qualitative and potentially sensitive data, such as interviews, focus groups, field notes, or observations.

You will explore how to responsibly share your research while protecting participants’ privacy and meeting ethical and legal requirements. The session covers why transparency matters in social research, the benefits and challenges of sharing qualitative data, and practical strategies for managing sensitive material, including anonymisation, sample-based sharing, and controlled access. We will also discuss repositories, provide a case study of sensitive data sharing, and highlight institutional and wider resources to support your work.

By the end, you will be equipped with actionable guidance to make your research more transparent, accessible, and ethically managed, helping you contribute to a culture of responsible, open and ethical social science research.

Outcomes

Participants in this workshop will:

• Understand why and how qualitative data can be shared responsibly in social science research;
• Identify ethical and legal considerations when working with sensitive data, including consent, anonymisation, and privacy;
• Learn practical strategies and tools for managing, sharing, and documenting qualitative research safely.

Contributors

Dr Jim Uttley is a Lecturer in Architectural Science and leader of the Open Research Working Group at the University of Sheffield. He strongly believes in the benefits of open research, not only to make research more transparent and ethical, but to make research more rigorous and of better quality.

Dr Jenni Adams is a Research Associate on the MORPHSS (Materialising Open Research Practices in the Humanities and Social Sciences) project. Jenni has a background in interdisciplinary research, research administration and academic libraries, and was previously the Open Research Manager at Sheffield University. In her current role, Jenni focuses on open practices in the social sciences, particularly the sharing of data generated through qualitative and mixed methods research.