Across disciplines, re-use of curated research data is becoming more popular. This also holds for education research. Yet, so far little is known on researchers’ perceptions regarding the data download experience, as well as how satisfied they are with reusing secondary data for their analyses (Late & Ochsner, 2024). To shed more light thereon, in this study, we take the perspective of the data consumer and analyse two data sources. First, we will carry out an analysis of data on the full population of SWISSUbase data downloaders. SWISSUbase is the platform for the sharing and obtaining social science data in Switzerland. Second, we analyse data from a survey in which we inquire data consumers about their experiences with the download and the subsequent work with the data. We consider data consumers who have downloaded data from SWISSUbase in the last three years. The contribution will present a descriptive analysis of how education researchers compare to other social science researchers. It will also show the most important secondary data re-use intentions and experiences. Another topic covered is data citation. We examine if the intended use is for research or teaching and if data consumers plan an academic publication based on the downloaded data. We also assess researchers’ perception about the quality of the data documentation and ask consumers about potential improvements in relation to the platform and the concomitant services to enhance their user experience. Based on the findings, lessons with regard to future directions of data reuse will be drawn. Moreover, there are also important lessons to be learnt by those data producers who so far are reluctant to share their data (Logan, Hart & Schatschneider, 2021).

Late, E. & Ochsner, M. (2024). Re-use of research data in the social sciences. Use and users of digital data archive. PLoS ONE 19(5): e0303190. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303190 Logan, J. A. R., Hart, S. A., & Schatschneider, C. (2021). Data Sharing in Education Science. AERA Open, 7. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584211006475