Data: A Critical Component for the Creation of a Lab School Consortium

• In Event: The Future of Child Development Laboratory Programs: A Multisite Applied Developmental Science Research Consortium?

Abstract

Summary:
The Child Development Laboratory (CDL) program on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign (UIUC) has a rich, 72 year history of facilitating teaching, research and outreach activities of faculty, staff and students on the UIUC campus. Through the years the CDL has established an infrastructure for facilitating research projects while at the same time providing high quality early childhood services for enrolled children. Although the CDL consistently served as a supportive arena for conducting research, it wasn’t until the implementation of the CDL Research Database Project (RDP) that such efforts moved beyond one-time data collection efforts. These one-time projects were completed on a semester/yearly basis with little or no cross-communication between investigators or systematic compilation of data. Such an approach failed to capitalize on the shared research interests and expertise of faculty within the UIUC, and limited the ability of the CDL to facilitate a programmatic research agenda designed to address important developmental issues facing children and their families. Since its inception in 1998, the implementation of the CDL RDP has played a significant role in shaping the nature of the research being conducted at the program. As a result of the resources provided through the database project, many of the studies being implemented at the CDL now take an “Applied Developmental Sciences” approach to data collection, and capitalize on the reciprocal exchange of data that is made available to investigators implementing projects. This has allowed researchers to develop a more comprehensive approach to generating data on the topics which they are investigating while expanding the types of data available for use in their projects, thus enhancing the types of questions they are able to address in their studies.

As work progresses on the creation of a multi-site research consortium that links lab schools at different institutions, the CDL RDP provides a model for the data sharing infrastructure tools that will be needed in order to make such a consortium a reality. The purpose of this paper will be to identify and address several key issues and/or questions that will need to be explored in order to expand the CDL RDP model for use as a data sharing and management infrastructure for a larger multi-site lab school consortium. The following questions will be addressed in the paper:
What are the major purposes and functions of a database system for a lab school consortium?
What clientele groups will have access to information contained in the database, both within participating lab schools, and across institutions?
What levels of information/data will be contained in the database, and how will each level of data be used to support research activities within and across participating sites?
What are the unique challenges associated with implementation of a lab school database system, and how will these challenges be addressed as the RDP model is expanded for use with a lab school consortium?
How can issues of data management, oversight and security be addressed with a RDP project created for a lab school consortium?

Author

• Brent A. McBride, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign