Infrastructure: The Data Donation Module (DDM)

As part of the data donation lab, we have developed an open source web application that facilitates data donations for academic research. This application is called "Data Donation Module" (DDM).

How to Use the DDM

The data donation lab hosts an instance of DDM that can be used by researchers working at the University of Zurich. To use and explore DDM, visit the following site and login with your Switch edu-ID connected to your UZH-email-address: https://datadonation.uzh.ch/ddm/login/

Key Features of the DDM as part of the Data Donation Lab

The DDM covers the following key features:

  • Researchers can create and manage their own data donation projects, without having to set up their own server.
  • Researchers can manage their project through a graphical user interface, and no in-depth programming knowledge is necessary.
  • Researchers can define pre-processing and filtering operations, that will be upload to data donations on the client-side, before the data is transmitted to the University's servers.
  • All data donations are encrypted and stored securely on internal database servers of the University of Zurich.
  • Data donors can donate their data through a compact interface that combines donation instructions, the donation upload, donation feedback as well as donation consent.
  • Data donation projects can be integrated with external survey software (e.g., Unipark).
  • Researchers can monitor their ongoing data donation collections through real-time participation statistics and an exception-log.

Read more about the functionality and design principles of the DDM in a paper published in Computational Communication Research.

Background Information

DDM is developed by the division "Media Use and Effects" of the Department of Communication and Media Research (University of Zurich) in collaboration with S3IT and is hosted on servers managed by the Central IT department of the University of Zurich. Furthermore, the application is open-source and the code of the application is openly accessible on GitHub.