Description of the RI

The Research Documentation Centre (RDC) at the Centre for Social Sciences (CSS), has been operating since 2013. It provides research data and other research documentation of researches conducted in the four institutes (Institute for Legal Studies, Institute for Minority Studies, Institute for Political Science, Institute for Sociology) of the CSS.

The RDC also runs the Voices of the 20th Century Archive and Research Group, which has been operating since 2009. It collects the heritage of Hungarian qualitative social research; in total, collections from all areas of Hungarian social science of the past 60 years can be researched at the RDC .

In the two archives, many important 20th and 21st century collections of qualitative and quantitative Hungarian sociological research are available digitally and partly physically: thousands of documents, audio and transcribed interviews, films, photos, drawings, questionnaire surveys, etc.

Meta- and paradata on the data and documentation held in the collections are accessible to anyone, providing information on research projects and topics, research participants and other basic data. Some of our collections are available to the public without registration, while other collections and research materials require registration.

Users can also find online information about our other current news, events, projects, publications presenting or using our collections, conferences and book launches, as well as links to the two social network sites of the RDC and the Voices of the 20th Century Archive (facebook.com/voicesofthe20century; facebok.com/tkkdk).

Activities and Services

A number of fully public research collections are available in the RDC repository. Some collections are accessible only to researchers of the CSS, but can also be used by external researchers with registration. Registration can be requested by e-mail: kdk@tk.hu

The Voices of the 20th Century Archive and Research Group handles a wide range of personal data, so its research collections are only accessible with user declaration. Detailed information on the activities and use of the Voices of 20th Century Archive can be found at our websites, which also provides information on the qualitative research collections available in the online repository. The sub-page "Qualitative collections" presents the careers of scholars who have regularly used qualitative methods in their social science research. The site also features three flagship projects (Children's Drawings, RESCAPE, Fairy Tale Forest), which provide examples of how the collections can be processed - giving researchers ideas for the secondary analysis and use of the resources available.

The RDC is also one of the main Hungarian centres for social science research data management in Hungary, providing professional advice on research data management, data protection regulations, GDPR regulations, and provides advice and documents required for compliance. RDC uses Artificial Intelligence to develop its search and data visualisation services, and collaborates with the domestic research data communities on a number of other projects.