This blog post features a new collection from the recent Legacy Data Preservation Pilot. The 2024 pilot was designed to capture and preserve at-risk data from completed research projects. There were 8 successful applicants to the scheme who worked with DRI staff and professional data stewards to ensure their research materials will remain accessible for the long term. The latest collection shares data about the experience of young Irish people (age 16-25) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read about some of the other legacy collections we’ve featured on the DRI blog such as the Dún Ailinne Excavation Archive, Irish language collections and Irish history collections, or view the collections in the Repository as they’re added.
Featured Collection
Growing Up in a Pandemic: health behaviours and the impact of COVID-19 on health inequalities among young people in Ireland — ‘Teenpath COVID’
What kind of data is it? The ‘Teenpath COVID’ study (2021-2023) was a mixed-methods, participatory study that investigated the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives, mental health and wellbeing of young people aged 16-25 in Ireland. Data collection began in February 2022, as the government announced an end to almost all remaining COVID-19 restrictions (e.g. mask wearing in schools, indoor retail settings and on public transport was to be voluntary; restrictions in schools were to end and testing was to be scaled back) and concluded in August 2023. The dataset therefore spans a period of over one year of reflections from key stakeholders and young people as the long-term impacts of the pandemic gradually became more apparent.
There are 37 transcriptions in rich text format (RTF) produced from in-depth qualitative interviews and focus group discussions with persons working in youth service, public health and education, as well as young people aged 16-25. The collection also includes relevant study documents such as participant information leaflets, consent forms and interview topic guides used for the two participant groups (stakeholders and young people).
How is it preserved in DRI? The original documents were carefully reviewed and edited to remove any information that may be used to identify participants or associated organisations. Participants were advised via consent forms that their anonymised data would be made available in an Open Access repository following the study, initially for no more than 10 years but this was later revised to allow an indefinite retention period to ensure the long-term availability of such valuable resources on young Irish peoples’ lives and experiences. The transcripts were uploaded as RTF documents and digital copies were automatically made by the Repository in PDF as well, to preserve the document design and legibility over time.
Who did the work? The project was led by Dr. Shona Lee, supervised by Dr. Debbi Stanistreet, based in the School of Population Health Sciences at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), and was funded by the EU Horizon 2020 scheme under a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship. Ruth Geraghty, Research Data Coordinator at RCSI, worked with Dr. Lee on the application to DRI’s Legacy Data Preservation Pilot and helped to prepare the dataset for deposit in the Repository.
Dr. Shona Lee is a Medical Anthropologist with 10 years of experience conducting qualitative and participatory research in the field of Global Public Health, investigating medical countermeasures and policies for infectious disease control. In 2021, she was awarded an EU Horizon 2020 funded MSCA fellowship to conduct the ‘Teenpath COVID’ project at RCSI, which was completed in November 2023.
Ruth Geraghty is the Research Data Coordinator at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, assisting research staff and students with Open Research, Research Data Management and publishing research data. Before joining the RCSI, Ruth worked as a social researcher and data curator in the academic and not for profit sectors. Ruth began her career in Open Research with the Irish Qualitative Data Archive in Maynooth University and was a team member in the original development of the Digital Repository of Ireland.
