Hi Catherine,
My two cents, haven't quite heard this take yet - I don't know if you have a collection date for the questionnaires, but most likely unless they are very recent, the researcher had gotten them into digital form for analysis already. Likely the SPSS or other type of data file has also been anonymised. My guess is that the questionnaires were being kept 'just in case' - of errors being found in the data, etc. This is common, and often it's the point of retiral where they must get dealt with - a bit more handy as there is a person who can be queried, or who will deal with it themselves.
It might be worth doing a little detective work to find out if the questionnaires relate to a known funded project or published output that the researcher had completed. If there is an anonymised dataset in existence then the questionnaires can and probably should be disposed of. Possibly they should be disposed of if not, as well, unless someone in the institution wants to take responsibility for the DPA implications of keeping them (for unknown research though? Why keep if so?).
Cheers,
--
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Robin Rice
Data Librarian
EDINA and Data Library
University of Edinburgh
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-----Original Message-----
From: Research Data Management discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Catharine Bailey
Sent: 19 October 2015 11:25
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Retention of physical research data
Dear All,
We have had a email from a college research manager asking us what they should do with a box of paper questionnaires they have found in the office of a recently deceased academic. Our RDM policy states that the University is committed to preserving and storing research data for a minimum of 10 years, or as directed by the funder. We are using figshare for digital data but this is our first query about retaining paper records.
We would be very interested to hear whether anyone has had to deal with a similar query and how other institutions are handling the retention of physical research data, particularly where a researcher has died or left the University.
Catharine Bailey
Research Data Manager
Brunel University, London
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