Vision and guidelines

The goal of CDSupport is to connect researchers who deal with similar “difficult” data. We define “difficult” data as data which is inherently distressing. Examples of such data include but are not limited to: data relating to abuse, violence, and illness. While we would love to help all scholars who deal with any form of data, unfortunately this is outside of the scope of CDSupport.

CDSupport runs as a “buddy” system, and as such if a person would like to be matched with a “buddy”, we ask that they also reciprocate the ability to be a “buddy” for someone else. We ask that people who have been “buddied” will keep in touch with each other at least once every university semester (i.e 10-12 weeks) to check in and make sure that their buddy is OK and ask whether or not that “buddy” would like to talk, however organisation of these meetings are up to the two matched people, and any additional meetings can be arranged outside of this.

When you sign up, you in essence put your name down to be able to be matched with potential "buddies". We do ask that you email to let us know when you would like to be matched with a "buddy" (i.e. we will not match people automatically, but as and when requests to be matched come in).

As it stands, we currently envision a relatively small network of ~200 scholars, though there is scope to go beyond this.

Currently, it is envisioned that CDSupport will run for 3 years.

Guidelines

For this project to work, we will store the following information about people who sign up:

1) the person’s name(s)

2) that person’s pronouns (we respect pronouns, and do not want to use incorrect ones when emailing or talking about someone)

3) the person’s contact email address

4) the area(s) of expertise of that person (i.e. the kinds of data they deal with)

5) any data that they request not to be matched with. We would also kindly ask that if any of these details change, we are notified to update our records.

Once a request has been made to the person co-coordinating CDSupport, currently Frazer Heritage (Frazer.heritage@bcu.ac.uk), he will then match people with someone who has the closest relevant area of interest and email both scholars to introduce each other. The scholars can then email each other separately and organise an informal discussion about their data and peer-support can begin.

Please do note, as previously mentioned, CDSupport is run charitably and without funding. While we will endeavor to ensure the utmost professionalism, please note that we may not always be able to respond to requests immediately.

We do also have a core set of values, which means that if there are any instances of sexism/racism/homophobia etc, we ask members to let us know and the offending party will be blacklisted.