Curating video data at the Research Data Centre for Education: Legal requirements and detailed documentations

Video recordings of participants in experimental or observational studies are a rich basis for psychological research on a multitude of behaviors and interactions. Because the same recording can be investigated with a wide range of methods or from different fields of research, video data offer a high potential for secondary analyses. Furthermore, considering that video data is costly and time consuming to collect for researchers and participants alike, it should be used to its full potential. However, the high density of information challenges the curation of video data, because it sets high demands on data protection and documentation. Due to these difficulties, video data are rarely shared within the psychological scientific community. In our presentation, we address this topic and demonstrate a best practice on curating and sharing video data according to the FAIR standard. We show how video data of research in schools are published within the German Network of Educational Research Data (VerbundFDB) and the Research Data Center for Education. Here, we aim for a transparent and harmonized procedure as well as explicit legal contracts. Our documentation includes a detailed description of a video’s content as well as a standardized form to assess contextual information. To ensure that only allowed parties may access the video data, we restrict data access to researchers whose identity is checked via Postident. To conclude our presentation, we will provide suggestions on how researchers and data managers can pave the way for a culture of sharing video data in psychology.