RCC’s work in upgrading the University of Queensland-led Global Policing Database has already reaped benefits for the research team, including more funding, academic outputs and collaboration.
The Global Policing Database (GPD), co-developed and operated by UQ and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) criminology researchers, includes robust evaluation research, conducted since 1950, of interventions relating to police and policing of all types.
It is web based and has been built using a comprehensive systematic search and screening methodology.
Its aim is to help police, researchers, social welfare practitioners and policymakers to make informed evidence-based policy and practice decisions about all aspects of policing, such as assisting victims, interviewing techniques and police wellbeing.
Jonathan Hadwen, from RCC’s Digital Humanities and Social Sciences team, has worked with the UQ School of Social Science team to move the five-year-old GPD to a new website built on Omeka S.
Jonathan is keen to promote Omeka S software to other humanities researchers.
“Omeka was originally written for museum exhibitions and cataloguing, but it works very well as a data repository,” he said. “It is great for academics and HDR students collating data, especially if they want to share this data with the public or even a small group of other researchers or interested parties.
“The latest version allows several websites to be made from the same data repository, so it is possible to restrict access to some of the data while making other parts of the repository public.”
The GPD website allows the browsing and searching of bibliographic data and abstracts of almost 1,000 articles, which is just a preview of what is available to subscribers to the database.
The GPD is distinct from other policing repositories as it captures evaluations of interventions conducted by police, with police and on police.
Co-chief investigators Professor Lorraine Mazerolle and Research Fellow Liz Eggins lead the project at UQ and are based in the School of Social Science node of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Children and Families Across the Lifecourse.
“Jonathan really did a great job and we have very much appreciated his help with the GPD,” said Lorraine.
Liz said Jonathan’s work meant they could enhance the dissemination and usability of the online database to enable further funding and academic outputs.
“This is not usually something that is easy to gain research funds for and we valued the RCC’s expertise and consultation during the process to achieve the best possible product,” said Liz.
“We are able to easily send the attractive and functional website to colleagues, stakeholders et cetera to open up discussion for collaboration through funding and/or research projects. In addition, we are now able to update the contents of the website in an expeditious fashion.”
As a testament to the new GPD, the UQ team has partnered with others and received funding for 20 reports and publications that draw from the database. “More than half of these have been in the last 18 months and equates to about $625,000 in research funds over this period,” said Liz.
The future of the GPD depends on ongoing funding. It has been wholly supported by external research funds and an extensive internship program that has graduated about 125 undergraduate and honours-level students since January 2015.
“Due to COVID-19, we have had to postpone the internship program,” said Liz.
Currently, the GPD team is exploring the option of an ARC LIEF grant and other funding sources, such as subscription-based funds from police organisations via the Australian and New Zealand Society of Evidence Based Policing.
Development of the GPD was funded by the UK College of Policing (including via the London Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime) and an ARC Laureate Fellowship awarded to Lorraine.
Funding to update the GPD was provided by grants for systematic reviews using the GPD, from sources including the Australian Institute of Criminology, the global Campbell Collaboration, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (USA), the Department of Homeland Security (USA), and the New Zealand Centre for Evidence Based Policing.
RCC Digital Humanities and Social Sciences team
RCC’s Digital HASS team provide digital consulting, and management and hosting of digital content for UQ HASS academics and HDR students.
The team is comprised of Jonathan Hadwen, a web developer, and Alvin Sebastian, a software developer.
Jonathan and Alvin can help with:
- business analysis
- co-designing digital solutions from inception to ensure they are cost-effective and well positioned for long-term support
- setting up prototype platforms
- adding new features to platforms
- migrating platforms on external systems to UQ and other local infrastructure
- fixing software bugs
- archiving dormant or retired infrastructure
- planning for future technical work
- responding to user questions and issues.
The following are some of the UQ projects Jonathan and Alvin have worked on or are currently involved in:
- Architecture: Digital Archive of Queensland Architecture. RCC is currently working on improving the original website.
- Education: Mindfields: Helping Students Create Positive Change. RCC has recently taken over hosting the website.
- Anthropology Museum catalogue. RCC is responsible for hosting and maintaining the catalogue.
- Social Science: Global Policing Database. RCC has moved the GPD from an old system to a new Omeka S database.
- Historical and Philosophical Inquiry: Solomon Islands Digital Archives.
- Human Movements: Pride, Resilience and Identity: Reimagining Aboriginal Sport History (no public website).
- Communications and Social Psychology: Environmental Activism Australia, a PhD student project by Robyn Gulliver.
RCC’s work on the last three projects listed above has involved building the sites from scratch using Omeka S and hosting the projects on QRIScloud, a cloud computer that RCC co-operates alongside QCIF.
About the three projects, Jonathan said: “We were responsible for importing already existing data sets into the new systems, and the academics and students were then able to add and refine more data after we gave them training in how to use the system.”
Jonathan and Alvin are also currently building a prototype language data commons for UQ's School of Languages and will soon take over the technical management of the Australian National Corpus (AusNC).
If you are a UQ Humanities and Social Sciences researcher interested in exploring RCC’s Digital HASS services, please contact the RCC Support Desk: rcc-support@uq.edu.au.
