As a publically funded research programme, Young Lives is committed to sharing its findings with a wide range of people involved in tackling child poverty and makes their rich and unique longitudinal survey dataset publically available to anyone who wishes to use it. And as a global public good, Young Lives wants to make sure that its data is widely used. Acknowledging the different skills and capacities of its partners and stakeholders, the programme is addressing their varying needs to access and use data by making it available in a range of different formats.

In 2010, Young Lives obtained seed funding from IKM-Emergent to explore new ways in which to visualise data. After looking at a range of tools, and considering what types of data were currently available, the team decided to build an online ‘virtual village’ which presents visitors with survey facts and figures about different aspects of childhood poverty, accompanied by short profiles from the children’s own words. In 2011, Young Lives started a new pilot project with IKM-Emergent to use the Young Lives dataset as a pilot to explore new technologies for sharing open data and creating a ‘linked data’ resource.

By exploring accessible and innovative ways to present data, Young Lives is helping to change the way in which development research data is presented and shared.

 

Title: Young Lives Impact and Learning, Finding new ways of sharing data Author: Young Lives Year: 2011