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IASSIST Quarterly Summer 2001 19

In 2000 the Russian Public Opinion
Research Center (VCIOM) initiated a
project on compiling a national sociologi-
cal data archive supported by the Ford
Foundation. The aim of the project is to
work out the content, the organizational
and financial principles of the formation
and further functioning of the national
sociological data archive on the basis of a
restricted number of VCIOM surveys as well as of other
research institutes carrying out representative sociological
surveys.

Beginning from the mid and late eighties, the need for a
national archive has been discussed by sociologists more
than once. However, it was only by the late 90s that real
conditions had been created for the project to become
viable. First, at present there are many research companies
conducting national and international representative
surveys which are of scientific value for a wide circle of
researchers. This situation posed new questions related to
the long-term data retention, their standardization and
availability for  researchers. Of course, each research
company solves itself these problems dealing with their
own databases and their possible users. However, as
VCIOM’s experience shows, possibilities of the solution of
these problems within each separate company are limited.
Second, besides the existing companies, there are more and
more researchers and research teams who conduct surveys
supported by grants from national and foreign funds. The
data obtained in these surveys are used by the researchers
themselves and are unavailable for other interested users,
which is contrary to the very nature of non-commercial
support of research. Third, due to the development of
sociological education in Russia for at least 10 years, there
is an increasing circle of potential consumers of sociologi-
cal data, who need access to such data for secondary
analysis in the teaching process, for preparing graduation
papers, dissertations, articles and monographs. The facts
mentioned above make the sociologist’s society move
towards compiling a national archive.

However, we realize that this task cannot be solved
overnight. It will take at least 2-3 years to create the
archive, as well as the effort and goodwill of many inter-
ested organizations, first of all those which are prepared to
deposit their data in the archive for storage and dissemina-

tion and also those which are prepared to
give financial, material and organiza-
tional support.

1. The expected results of the pilot
project are as follows:
2. Data files formed on the basis of
the data provided by VCIOM and
other organizations which agreed to

take part in establishing the archive;
3. The information-retrieval system which will
enable the users to find the necessary information;
4. Organizational, technological and financial
principles of the archive functioning which will
make the archive a social institution (design-
project);

The duration of the pilot project is one year – from January
to December 2001. The project manager is Dr. L.
Khakhulina (VCIOM), coordinator and  executive manager
– Dr. L. Kosova (VCIOM), consultant – Dr. A.
Kryshtanovsky (Higher Scholl of Economics).

It is planned to hold an international seminar to present the
results of the pilot project of establishing the national
archive and to discuss its main technological and organiza-
tional principles. The principal characteristic of the pilot
stage of the formation of the sociological archive is the fact
that VCIOM, the coordinator of the work, plans to do it
together with other interested companies which carry out
sociological surveys.

In the course of negotiations with the leaders of the most
well-known and highly qualified institutes such as A.Oslon
(Public Opinion Foundation), E.Bashkirova (ROMIR),
L.Drobizheva, N.Rostegayeva, (Institute of Sociology)
M.Gorshkov, N.Tichonova (Russian Independent Institute
of Social and Nationalities Problems) showed interest in the
participation in the setting up of the national archive.
Working together with these organizations it is planned,
first, to form data archives which will constitute the “core”
of the future archive, second, to agree on the principles of
cooperation of the archive and the depositors - owners of
the information, on the one hand, and of the archive and its
users, on the other hand; these principles will be the basis
for the functioning of the national archive. Third, and it is
probably the most important item, to form the Board of

On the Pilot Project “Sociological Archive”

by Ludmilla Khakhulina & Larisa
Kosova 1



20 IASSIST Quarterly Summer 2001

Trustees (Experts) of the program “Sociological Archive”,
which will define the main directions of the archive’s work
from the scientific and organizational points of view.

Upon completion of the pilot project the work on the
sociological archive formation will be continued. It means
that the general design-project of the archive, the sociologi-
cal data files and the information-retrieval system upon
completion of the pilot project will be handed over, with all
the legal formalities observed, to the program “Sociological
Archive” functioning within the framework of the indepen-
dent institute “Social Policy”.

Priorities in the selection of information at the pilot
stage.
In theory, the sociological data archive can and should
contain any data obtained in the course of sociological
surveys if they meet certain requirements of the archive.
Besides, the archive may contain also texts based on these
data (articles, monographs, etc.). However, since the time
of conducting the pilot survey is limited, we restricted
ourselves at this stage to prepare the data files which are
the most “popular” from the users’ point of view (assessed
by the number of request sent to the VCIOM), namely:

1. Russian data of the last 2-3 years obtained on a
national sample
2. Data from comparative international surveys in
which Russia took part
3. Electoral surveys
4. Sociological trends.

Requirements to the data submitted
These are the same requirements as they are set in other
archives of Europe and the USA. Following these rules we
get the possibility to become part of the “archive” commu-
nity. Naturally, it will require additional work in some of
the companies to fulfill the requirements. We have worked
out the outline of a document based on the general require-
ments and our experience – “Guidelines for the depositor”
which describes the content and volume of work to be done
for transferring the data to the archive. If a company agrees
to participate in this work, it receives this document to
prepare the data for the archive.

Relations with the depositors
An important issue in the relations between the archive and
the depositor is the copyright for the information. We
proceed from the general provisions which  are as follows:

The archive is a social institution established on the basis of
a voluntary agreement of information owners for the
purpose of storing and disseminating this information.

It means that the proprietor of the information is its
“producer”, while the archive only receives the copyright

for the information administrator to perform certain
functions, namely:

• storing the information received in the established order,
having full responsibility for its physical integrity

• dissemination of the information among the users for
secondary analysis according to the provisions discussed
with and approved by the producer (acting as the depositor)
and the general rules of all the archives.

From the legal point of view the above stated means that
the archive and the depositor conclude a contract (agree-
ment) on transferring the copyright for the information,
which stipulates the rights and duties of each party.

This contract can stipulate all the conditions related to the
transfer of the data to the archive. The body of the contract
states that the organization, a potential depositor, agrees to
prepare its data and the relevant documentation in accor-
dance with the “Guidelines for the Depositor”. In its turn,
VCIOM as the coordinator of the project is obligated to
ensure the physical integrity of the prepared data and
documentation until they are transferred to the archive
(within the framework of the institute “Social Policy”). If
an organization prefers not to transfer the data to the project
coordinator (VCIOM, in this case) it will submit only the
required documentation for the research (study description,
questionnaires, methodological reports, etc.), which will be
entered in the data-retrieval system of the future archive.

Thus at the initial stage we proceed from the possibility that
the archive could be based on a distributed storage of data
files. In other words, a certain part, preferably the larger
part, is stored in the archive, while the rest of the data are
kept in the organizations – depositors, which agree to make
the data available for the user in the required quality,
format and time.

Another problem in the relations with the potential deposi-
tors is the stimulation to deposit their data in the archive. At
present, we suggest that the following stimuli should be
used. The founders of the archive, on the one hand, have
the possibility to present their surveys and their companies
to the interested public and to have an open access to the
data of other companies in the archive and, on the other
hand, they can form the quality standard for surveys which
can be accepted by the archive for storage and dissemina-
tion.

The practice of relations between the archive and its
users within the framework of this pilot project is not
elaborated. The VCIOM as the project coordinator does not
take upon itself the task of disseminating the information
(data) of other companies. First of all because the legal
procedure of transferring the copyright for information has
not been worked out. We just generally assume that, as is



IASSIST Quarterly Summer 2001              21

the practice of all other archives, information is made
available for the academic community free of charge,
especially under the current circumstances of very modest
financial resources of both academic institutes, universities
and researchers, professors and students.

As it is the practice of the European archives, the principle
of free data provision does not extend to commercial
organizations (consulting companies, advertising and PR
agencies, marketing organizations, etc.), which may apply
to the archive for certain data. The model of relations with
such organizations is planned to be different  This question,
however, has not been considered from the practical point
of view so far.

At present, a data file is being formed, the information-
retrieval system is being designed, and the interaction with
potential depositors is being worked out.

1. Contact: VCIOM, Kazakova 16, Moscow 103064,
Russia, Phone: +7 095 2654772. Ludmilla Khakhulina:
lkhahul@wciom.ru, Larisa Kosova: lkos@wciom.ru