Trust in Qualitative Data Repositories

Abstract

This paper applies Pirson and Malhotra’s (2011) framework for organizational trust to data reuse in an educational context. Their framework delineates stakeholders along two axes: depth of the interactions (e.g., shallow or deep) and the locus of the relationship (e.g., internal or external). We analyzed 139 survey responses and 44 in-depth interviews with users of repositories holding video records of practice. We found that factors such as data quality, co-production of data between the repository and data producer, responsiveness of staff, and transparency of curation processes influenced trust, and that responsiveness and transparency were of particular importance for trust development for users with deeper interactions and a more internal loci of relationships to repositories.