Social scientists' satisfaction with data reuse

Abstract

Much of the recent research on digital data repositories has focused on assessing either the trustworthiness of the repository or quantifying the frequency of data reuse. Satisfaction with the data reuse experience, however, has not been widely studied. Drawing from the information systems and information science literature, we developed a model to examine the relationship between data quality and data reusers' satisfaction. Based on a survey of 1,480 journal article authors who cited I nter‐ U niversity C onsortium for P olitical and S ocial R esearch ( ICPSR ) data in published papers from 2008–2012, we found several data quality attributes—completeness, accessibility, ease of operation, and credibility—had significant positive associations with data reusers' satisfaction. There was also a significant positive relationship between documentation quality and data reusers' satisfaction.