User requirements elicitation study for ALPHA network data provenance documentation browsing software

Kanjala, C, Gregory, A, Greenfield, J, Slaymaker, E and Todd, J. 2020. User requirements elicitation study for ALPHA network data provenance documentation browsing software. [Online]. London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom. Available from: https://doi.org/10.17037/DATA.00001522.

Kanjala, C, Gregory, A, Greenfield, J, Slaymaker, E and Todd, J. User requirements elicitation study for ALPHA network data provenance documentation browsing software [Internet]. London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; 2020. Available from: https://doi.org/10.17037/DATA.00001522.

Kanjala, C, Gregory, A, Greenfield, J, Slaymaker, E and Todd, J (2020). User requirements elicitation study for ALPHA network data provenance documentation browsing software. [Data Collection]. London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.17037/DATA.00001522.

Description

The ALPHA Network (Analysing Longitudinal Population-based HIV/AIDS data on Africa) is working on a project to produce a sharable set of harmonised data that combines both population-based and clinic data from the partner studies with funding from the Wellcome Trust. Whilst community-based cohorts and demographic surveillance systems provide a rich source of data, use of the data is often limited because successful analysis requires detailed knowledge of the study's contemporary and historical procedures and of data management practices. To date the ALPHA Network has successfully extracted and harmonised 10 standard data tables from the partner studies. However, these data are still complex and require considerable prior knowledge to use effectively, which in practice means the data can only be used in collaboration with one of the ALPHA staff. This data collection contains qualitative data collected as part of scoping work to establish domain experts’ perspectives on the functionality that a user-friendly metadata browser for ALPHA datasets should provide. It contains transcripts of 10 semi-structured Skype interviews conducted with individual researchers and data managers affiliated to the ALPHA network and the Cohort & Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources (CLOSER) project. Interviews explored proposed features of the metadata browser, including: provision for viewing all tasks performed in the process of creating a dataset, browsing the steps in each task, task purpose, related concepts, related code scripts, association between a sub-task and its input data and outputs and provision for viewing data structure.

Methods

Description of data capture

A convenience sample of 10 participants was drawn from data managers and researchers affiliated to the ALPHA and CLOSER projects. These two groups of users, were considered suitable for identifying the requirements of both internal and external users. All but one interviewee had at least a master’s degree and 5 years work experience. The data collection consisted of background material reading and a recorded Skype interview. An information pack was emailed to the study participants prior to the interview. In this pack there were the following items - (1) a study background document, (2) an information sheet, (3) a consent form and (4) a question guide comprising of the 6 mock-up diagrams of the proposed features and accompanying questions. Each participant was interviewed over Skype on the features in the mock-up diagrams using the semi-structured question guide. The participants graded each feature’s importance on a provided scale and gave the rationale for their grading. Further, they listed any desired features not included in the mock-ups.

Data capture method

Interview: Telephone - CATI

Data Collection Period

From	To
10 March 2019	20 May 2019

Date (Date submitted to LSHTM repository)

1 July 2020

Geographical area covered (offline during plugin upgrade)

North Latitude	East Longitude	South Latitude	West Longitude
-21.8754	33.4468	-34.3195	15.4292
12.9686	51.3765	-7.63869	27.1187
59.1749	1.84024	49.8933	-7.73984

Language(s) of written materials

English

People & Groups

Data Creators	Kanjala, C, Gregory, A, Greenfield, J, Slaymaker, E and Todd, J
Associated roles	Knight, G, Castillo, T and Beckles, D
LSHTM Faculty/Department	Academic Services & Administration > Library Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health > Dept of Population Health (2012- )
Participating Institutions	London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom

Projects

Funders

Project	Funder	Grant Number	Funder URI
PhD Thesis: Provenance of “after the fact” harmonised community-based demographic and HIV surveillance data from ALPHA cohorts	UNSPECIFIED	UNSPECIFIED	UNSPECIFIED