This report outlines the main results of a survey fielded by ODISSEI and DANS among data supporters in the Netherlands. The survey was launched at the end of 2021 and focused on assessing the needs of data stewards supporting researchers working with (quantitative) social science data. Results indicate that, despite the large amount of FAIR resources available online, there is a need for practical guidance on how to `do FAIR’ in the social sciences, and highlight various challenges in the domain of privacy, data anonymisation and GDPR-compliance. To overcome these challenges, ODISSEI and DANS aim to build a website focusing on practical guidance on FAIR implementation in the social sciences, establishing a ‘FAIR help desk’ for ad-hoc support, and organise networking activities to facilitate connections among data supporters working in the social sciences.
This work was executed as part of the ODISSEI Roadmap Project funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under grant number 184.035.014.