An exploratory study of health scientists’ data reuse behaviors: Examining attitudinal, social, and resource factors

The purpose of this paper is to examine how health scientists’ attitudinal, social, and resource factors affect their data reuse behaviors.

A survey method was utilized to investigate to what extent attitudinal, social, and resource factors influence health scientists’ data reuse behaviors. The health scientists’ data reuse research model was validated by using partial least squares (PLS) based structural equation modeling technique with a total of 161 health scientists in the USA.

The analysis results showed that health scientists’ data reuse intentions are driven by attitude toward data reuse, community norm of data reuse, disciplinary research climate, and organizational support factors. This research also found that both perceived usefulness of data reuse and perceived concern involved in data reuse have significant influences on health scientists’ attitude toward data reuse.

This research evaluated its newly proposed research model based on the theory of planned behavior using a sample from the community of scientists’ scholar database. This research showed an overall picture of how attitudinal, social, and resource factors influence health scientists’ data reuse behaviors. This research is limited due to its sample size and low response rate, so this study is considered as an exploratory study rather than a confirmatory study.

This research suggested for health science research communities, academic institutions, and libraries that diverse strategies need to be utilized to promote health scientists’ data reuse behaviors.

This research is one of initial studies in scientific data reuse which provided a holistic map about health scientists’ data sharing behaviors. The findings of this study provide the groundwork for strategies to facilitate data reuse practice in health science areas.