Challenges in Remote Study Design: An Infrastructure Review of a Linkage Study

Planning and designing a study that links content analysis and panel data is a complex endeavor and managing a collaborative research project across multiple organizations involves many hurdles and challenges. Both, the complexity of a linkage design and the challenging nature of a collaborative research project are enhanced by the COVID-19 pandemic, demanding creative solutions for many issues and a lot of planning by the researchers involved. Especially the challenges involved in gathering, storing, analyzing, and accessing data are amplified by the lack of face-to-face contact and standardized technical infrastructure for digital collaborative research projects. This article aims at giving an overview of the technical infrastructure involved in the content analysis part of a large-scale linkage study, providing researchers with a blueprint of the many moving parts involved in the study’s implementation. This overview will be discussed with a reflective eye toward the challenges encountered and solutions found in the process, the added layer of complexity of a global pandemic, and potential learnings for future projects like this.