Survey Questionnaire: Research Data Management, Sharing, and Reuse Practices in Social Sciences – An Empirical Study of Indian Academia

This document contains the full version of the survey questionnaire used in the empirical study titled "Research Data Management, Sharing, and Reuse Practices in Social Sciences: An Empirical Study of Indian Academia." The study aims to examine how researchers in India’s social science disciplines engage with data curation, management, sharing, and reuse. The questionnaire includes 37 items across five sections: (1) Demographics, (2) Data Curation and Management, (3) Data Sharing, (4) Data Reuse, and (5) Incentives for Open Data Practices.

The instrument was developed using a theory-driven, interdisciplinary framework informed by global best practices in research data management (RDM), open science, and FAIR data principles. It integrates standardized definitions of key concepts (e.g., research data, metadata, data repositories) and includes structured Likert-scale items, categorical choices, and open-response prompts. This study received formal ethical approval from the Institutional Ethics Committee, Institute of Development Studies Kolkata (IDSK). All research activities involving human subjects comply with the Declaration of Helsinki, including informed consent, anonymization, and data protection. The study also adheres to the Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) guidelines by disaggregating data by sex/gender and analyzing equity-related variables where applicable.

This version is shared publicly to support transparency, methodological openness, reproducibility, and reuse in research assessment and Open Science initiatives. The questionnaire may be adapted for further cross-national, longitudinal, or disciplinary studies on research data practices.