Creating Shareable Research Data Training in Kyrgyzstan

In March 2018, during the local Spring break, Veerle Van Den Eynden and Louise Corti from the UK Data Service visited Kyrgyzstan to provide training on research data sharing. The main focus of their visit was to support creating a large collection of sensitive interviews, case studies and focus group discussions from the national Gender in Society Perceptions Study (GSPS). This followed an enquiry by United Nations (UN) Women Country Office in the Kyrgyz Republic a year ago. Veerle and Louise offered advice on anonymization and sharing of the data and the possibility of using the UK Data Service as a place of deposit due to there being no full-fledged Kyrgyzstani data repository. This was followed up with a training workshop to advance the data management and sharing capacity in the country, organised by the Principal Investigator of the study, Meghan McCormack, who is also a law lecturer at the American University of Central Asia (AUCA). The training event was supported by AMICAL (American International Consortium of Academic Libraries) with the UK Data Archive offering pro-bono training time for Veerle and Louise.