About ESDS Qualidata Online

ESDS Qualidata supports the acquisition, dissemination and re-use of qualitative social science research data. ESDS Qualidata Online is the interactive face of that service, moving beyond catalogue searching and data download to allow web-based free-text and filtered searching, browsing and retrieval of research data in real time. Increasingly, data in the system includes not only traditional interview transcripts, but also audio and image files.

One key study, The Edwardians: Family Life and Work Experience before 1918, was used to develop and pilot non-proprietary formats for preserving, searching, and disseminating data. Holdings have now expanded beyond The Edwardians interviews to include data from two additional collections, 100 Families and Mothers and Daughters. Various combinations of transcripts, summaries, methodology and background materials are available to browse and search.

Behind the scenes are non-proprietary formats for preserving the content of qualitative datasets to enable portability and data interchange. A draft of a DTD (document type definition) for a generalised XML application for qualitative datasets is also available, detailed in the Technical background menu.

Currently, only a subset of interviews from each collection is available. However, the numbers of both interviews and collections will be increased over the coming months, although processing resources to add data into this system are limited. If there are datasets you would like to see on ESDS Qualidata Online, please let us know.