Articulating data harmonization as pragmatic, collaborative experiences

MCHI Research Group

A presentation for the McGill Clinical and Health Information Research Group. It is too soon for me to present any findings, so instead I’m talking about my research protocol and plan of action.

Author

Zack Batist

Published

April 3, 2025

Outline

  1. My background
  2. My objectives
  3. Plan of action
  4. Questions and feedback?

About me

  • Palaeolithic/Neolithic of Greece / Cyprus / Near East
  • Managed archaeological project databases
  • Computational methods using integrated datasets

zackbatist.info | archaeo.social/@zackbatist

About me

  • Scholar of scientific practice
  • Specific interests:
    • data sharing
    • data documentaion
    • information commons
    • research infrastructure
    • research software
    • alternative publishing
    • collaborative experiences
    • open science in practice

Adapted from xkcd.com/1838

zackbatist.info | archaeo.social/@zackbatist

What am I doing here?

  • Framing harmonization as information commons
    • Who contributes? Who extracts?
    • What are their converging and diverging interests?
    • What commitments do these interactions entail?
  • Framing harmonization as value-driven, improvized action
    • What are the targeted outcomes?
    • How do they go about trying to achieve these objectives?
    • Are their strategies successful? Why or why not?
  • Revealing tensions between:
    1. naive collective imaginations about data in technical and administrative systems
    2. the messy, pragmatic and collaborative reality of data work in practice

zackbatist.info/CITF-Postdoc

Interviews

  • Interviews with leaders and key stakeholders of data harmonization initiatives
  • I will ask participants about:
    • The motivations for their initiatives
    • The challenges they experience
    • How they envision success and failure
    • Perceptions of their own roles and the roles of others
    • The values that inform their decisions
    • The systems that enable them to achieved their goals
    • Ways in which they believe data sharing could be improved

zackbatist.info/CITF-Postdoc/interview-protocol

Qualitative Data Analysis

  • Coding interview transcripts
    • Enables me to develop theory about social actions
  • Writing analytic memos
    • To synthesize broader concepts, themes and theories based on the encoded data
  • Informed by broader theoretical frameworks
    • About scientific practice, research infrastructure, collaborative experiences, information commons
  • Theory is therefore “grounded” in the data

Codes applied to an interview transcript from my prior research.

Sampling

  • Theoretical sampling
    • Sample emerges in response to ongoing theory-building
  • Clustered into cases
    • Cases are data harmonization initiatives
    • Each constitute their own sets of goals and circumstances
    • Leveraging overlap and difference to support comparison
  • Not generalizable, but representative of work occurring under similar circumstances
  • Doesn’t have to be fully generalizable to inform practical action

Current Work

  • First interview next week
  • Creating “situational maps”
    • Identifying “elements” and potential relationships
    • Relating my own understanding to interviewees’ persectives
    • Writing memos about these elements

Questions / Comments ?

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