Data Reuse and Users’ Trust Judgments: Toward Trusted Data Curation

Ayoung Yoon: Data Reuse and Users’ Trust Judgments: Toward Trusted Data Curation (Under the direction of Dr. Helen R. Tibbo) Data reuse refers to the secondary use of data—not for its original purpose but for studying new problems. Although reusing data might not yet be the norm in every discipline, the benefits of reusing shared data have been asserted by a number of researchers, and data reuse has been a major concern in many disciplines. Assessing data for its trustworthiness becomes important in data reuse with the growth in data creation because of the lack of standards for ensuring data quality and potential harm from using poor-quality data. This dissertation aims to explore many facets of data reusers’ trust in data generated by other researchers, focusing on user-defined trust attributes and the judgment process with influential factors that determine these attributes. Because trust is a complex concept that is explored in multiple disciplines, this study developed a theoretical framework from an extensive literature review in the areas of sociology, social psychology, information, and information systems. This study takes an interpretive qualitative approach by using in-depth semi-structured interviews as the primary research method. The study population comprises reusers of quantitative social science data from public health and social work—the primary disciplines with data reuse cultures. By employing purposive sampling, a total of 38 participants were recruited.