Lifespan Research & Data Archive Repository (RADAR)



For latest news and updates visit RADAR blog

 

Project Overview

Lifespan Research Group (Department of Health And Social Care) has gained funding from JISC (Capital Programme for Repositories Start-up) to support the development, preservation and future accessibility of its valuable collection of life histories. This will provide the foundations for exploring the requirements for an information environment for research data collections in the frame of the College-wide Digital Object Repository (DOR). The project will involve the design of a digitisation strategy that embraces and defines best-practice solutions for long-term digital data preservation and the processes of creating, submitting and accessing current and future critical datasets in all fields of enquiry. This will need to ensure compliance with data security, copyright legislation, licensing, and associated audit functions. Royal Holloway has committed to deliver adequate means for knowledge exchange, which include forward-looking information environments and their interoperability with current and future strategic alliances.  The Lifespan RADAR project will provide an initiative to meet with these demands generally, and hopes to become a hub for future nationwide social science research activity through the preservation and preparation for re-use of a unique data set held within the Lifespan group.

JISC supports UK further & higher education and research by providing leadership in the use of Information and Communications Technology in support of learning, teaching, research and administration. JISC receives funding from all the UK further and higher education funding councils.

The Collection

The Lifespan Collection consists of an intergenerational sample of over 500 family members living in North London in the 1990s, who gave their life stories from childhood to the present day in taped interviews. There are around 3,400 hours of audio taped interviews, rated schedules in the form of paper records, and an electronic quantitative data set that need to be fully archived and made available for future research. To date, this unique data set has been the source of many research publications into topics such as childhood neglect/abuse; adult stress and coping; attachment style; self-esteem; relationship with partner and parenting behaviour as well as lifetime psychiatric disorders both affective and behavioural. However, the qualitative aspects are as yet largely untapped and additional analyses still wait to be undertaken. With a diverse team (including researchers from psychology, oral history, history and musicology) working on the project. The long-term aim is to release the collection’s interdisciplinary potential for a wider research community.

Aims and Objectives

• Implement an information environment suitable to the research group’s needs and epistemological underpinnings
• Secure funding for population of the Digital Object Repository and further storage space.
• Research best-practice preservation solutions with appropriate legal and ethical considerations.
• Explore options for use in new research projects and create appropriate networks.
• Develop a framework for other similar start-up ventures within Royal Holloway, University of London complementing the Digital Object Repository’s (DOR) e-learning and teaching infrastructure.
• Lay the groundwork for and explore the potential use in e-learning and teaching.
• Create communication layer that incorporates future interoperability with similar projects in the social sciences (specifically in the interest of Lifespan), with RHUL’s strategic alliances (St. George’s University of London and Kingston University), and other research lines within the wider community.

Project Partners

Principal Investigator: Prof. Antonia Bifulco
Co-Principal Investigator: Dr. Graham Smith
Research Assistants: Ananay Aguilar and Leonie Hannan
IT Developer: Alison Pope
Web Designer and Administrator: Natasa Blagojevic-Stokic