The role of data sharing in survey dropout: a study among scientists as respondents

PurposeOne of the currently debated changes in scientific practice is the implementation of data sharing requirements for peer-reviewed publication to increase transparency and intersubjective verifiability of results. However, it seems that data sharing is a not fully adopted behavior among researchers. The theory of planned behavior was repeatedly applied to explain drivers of data sharing from the perspective of data donors (researchers). However, data sharing can be viewed from another perspective as well: survey participants. The research questions (RQs) for this study were as follows: 1 Does data sharing increase participant's nonresponse? 2 Does data sharing influence participant's response behavior? The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.Design/methodology/approachTo answer the RQs, a mixed methods approach was applied, consisting of a qualitative prestudy and a quantitative survey including an experimental component. The latter was a two-group setup with an intervention group (A) and a control group (B). A list-based recruiting of members of the Medical Faculty of the University of Freiburg was applied for 15 days. For exploratory data analysis of dropouts and nonresponse, we used Fisher's exact tests and binary logistic regressions.FindingsIn sum, we recorded 197 cases for Group A and 198 cases for Group B. We found no systematic group differences regarding response bias or dropout. Furthermore, we gained insights into the experiences our sample made with data sharing: half of our sample already requested data of other researchers or shared data on request of other researchers. Data repositories, however, were used less frequently: 28% of our respondents used data from repositories and 19% stored data in a repository.Originality/valueTo the authors' knowledge, their study is the first study that includes researchers as survey subjects investigating the effect of data sharing on their response patterns.