DataWiz - An Automated Assistant for the Management of Psychological Research Data

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Claudia Dalbert, since 1/2022
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology ; Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2015 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 270174144

For a long time, data sharing was not very common in the science community. Recent criticisms of scientific procedures on the one hand (cf. replication crisis) and the digitization of scientific workflows on the other hand have fostered open science practices. In psychology, DataWiz is an open science tool that pursues the following strategic goals: (1) establishing domain-adequate research data management in psychology and (2) storing the research data sustainably (3) providing incentives to share the data. The DataWiz assistance system is an expert system which provides the knowledge base and procedural support for data sharing simultaneously. Its standardized formats and interfaces allow and encourage the transfer of research data to an established data archive. There are additional benefits, such as the facilitation of study registration and compliance with publishers’ or editors’ requirements. The positive feedback of the research community clearly shows that data sharing can be proliferated with the help of DataWiz. However, test users and early adopters voice concerns about the usability and connectivity of DataWiz which endangers its establishment as a widely used research tool in Psychology. Therefore, in a follow-up project the DataWiz usability will be evaluated in laboratory and field settings and improved according to users’ feedback. Various research contexts will be tested, problems identified and solutions implemented. In addition, machine to machine communication for the automatic exchange of information between DataWiz and other research support systems will be developed based on established lightweight protocols like SWORD or REST. Those protocols will be used for depositing content from DataWiz to a digital repository or for connecting data collection or data analysis software (e.g. SurveyMonkey, R) to DataWiz. Furthermore, digital Research Object Bundles (DROs) will be developed to further enhance DataWiz’ compliance with the FAIR data principles (to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable). The improvements in usability and connectivity will optimize DataWiz applicability for the entire spectrum of psychological research and make it a widely used professional tool.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Armin Günther
• Ehemalige Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Michael Bosnjak, from 3/2021 until 1/2022; Privatdozent Dr. Erich Weichselgartner, until 3/2021