Bogna Liziniewicz
The present study investigates the state of open data (defined as research data free to access and use by everyone) in Psychology. The project compares the quality and reusability of public and requested datasets. It also explores researchers’ attitudes towards data sharing. Expanding the existing research, largely focused on publicly available psychological data, it investigates both data sources simultaneously, allowing to evaluate the persistence of past findings and estimate their source-based proportion. Additionally, investigating the most-recent attitudes towards open data permits identifying opinion changes, enabling novel approaches to the discussion of open science. The present study investigates the quality and reusability of psychological research data by assessing their different components, including universal file formats and the presence of supporting information. The attitudes are investigated via a questionnaire adapted from previous studies, extended to open-ended questions, to grasp any novel opinions not investigated previously. The results suggest a significantly better state of public data compared to the requested data. In addition, the attitudes align with previous findings: positive attitudes towards data sharing, despite various fears. The study addresses the importance of not only encouraging open science practices, but also by highlighting the need to ensure better quality of requested data.