FAIR Data Resources

Learn about resources to advance awareness and implementation of FAIR data practices across the research lifecycle.

FAIR data
tools

Tips and tools for traumatic stress researchers

Key references
for further learning

FAIR Data principles

and methods

FAIR data tools

Global Collaboration on Traumatic Stress (GCTS) FAIR Data Toolkit

Designed to help traumatic stress researchers incorporate FAIR data practices at each stage of the research data lifecycle.

The Toolkit includes a curated and annotated list of resources from many scientific disciplines, as well as tools created by the GCTS FAIR Data Workgroup specifically for traumatic stress researchers, e.g.:

A set of one-page practical tip sheets on key topics:
- Finding Data for Re-Use
- Ethics & Consent: How to Think About Sharing Sensitive Data
- Sharing Data
- Preparing Data for Sharing & Re-use
- De-Identifying / Anonymizing Your Data for Sharing

Sample Consent Form Language for Data Sharing

Checklist for Reducing Re-Identification Risk in Traumatic Stress Research Data

Information on Choosing a Data Repository – A Comparison of Repositories

Other suggested tools / resources

FAIR Data 101 training from the Australian Research Data Commons
How To Guides from the Digital Curation Centre, University of Edinburgh

Reusable data resources

Index of FAIR data resources - Global Collaboration on Traumatic Stress (GCTS) FAIR Data Workgroup

This index of potentially re-usable datasets relevant to traumatic stress research includes single-study datasets as well as data resources that bring together datasets from multiple studies related to a specific topic or area of interest.

ADULT TRAUMA TREATMENT

PTSD Repository

The PTSD Trials Standardized Data Repository (PTSD Repository) is a comprehensive source of study-level data from randomized controlled trials on PTSD treatments. It allows users to identify studies based on sample or study characteristics and provides information on a range of outcomes, including standardized effect sizes. It is updated annually and currently includes data from over 500 trials.

MetaPsy - Meta-Analytic Database of Randomized Controlled Trials - Psychological Treatment of PTSD

This interactive online meta-analysis tool builds on data compiled by the National Center for PTSD (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs).

Project Harmony

Project Harmony is a "virtual clinical trial" integrating data from over 50 existing studies around the world on the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and comorbid alcohol and other drug disorders (AODs) in adults. Project Harmony examines the relative efficacy of different PTSD/AOD treatments.

GRIEF / TRAUMATIC GRIEF

Multi-region Archive of Research data on Bereavement and Loss from Empirical Studies (MARBLES)

The MARBLES project brings together data from research programs on grief in adults and children to build a FAIR data archive that can be used for continuing research on symptoms, course, and correlates of grief following traumatic and nontraumatic loss, enabling analyses of large datasets of relatively rare cases.

Grief in Daily Life (Grief-ID)

The Grief-ID project provides harmonized datasets from ecological momentary assessment (EMA) research projects on grief and prolonged grief disorder. The use of EMA in grief research captures time- and context-dependent changes, disentangles between-person from within-person effects, reduces recall bias, and offers an ecologically valid assessment of grief reactions.

CHILD TRAUMA

Child Trauma Data Archives (CTDA)

The Child Trauma Data Archives project brings together individual participant data from child trauma studies. The project includes the Prospective studies of Acute Child Trauma & Recovery (PACT/R) Data Archive - with over 30 prospective (non-intervention) studies following children after exposure to an acute trauma, and the Child Trauma Prevention and Treatment (CTPT) Data Archive - a newer collection of data from child trauma intervention studies that examined prevention or treatment of mental health sequelae of trauma exposure. CTDA data are available upon request to researchers, from the CTDA team, or via the Child Trauma Data Collection maintained by ICPSR.

Key references for further learning

FAIR Data guiding principles

Wilkinson M.D., Dumontier M., Aalbersberg I.J., et al. (2016). The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific Data, 3:160018. DOI:10.1038/sdata.2016.18

Seminal publication that defined the FAIR principles for scientific data.

Stall, S., Yarmey, L., Cutcher-Gershenfeld, J., Hanson, B., Lehnert, K., Nosek, B., Parsons, M., Robinson, E., & Wyborn, L. (2019). Make scientific data FAIR. Nature, 570(7759), 27-29. DOI: 10.1038/d41586-019-01720-7

Editorial: Makes the case that all scientific disciplines should demand best practice for publishing and sharing data.

Carroll, S.R., Herczog, E., Hudson, M. et al. Operationalizing the CARE and FAIR Principles for Indigenous data futures. Sci Data 8, 108 (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41597-021-00892-0

Useful overview of the CARE Principles (developed by indigenous communities globally) and how these can complement FAIR data principles.

Data sharing and FAIR Data in traumatic stress research and related fields

Kassam-Adams, N & Olff M (2020). Embracing data preservation, sharing, and re-use in traumatic stress research. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 11 (1). DOI: 10.1080/20008198.2020.1739885

Editorial: Importance of traumatic stress field joining the growing international movement towards Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable (FAIR) research data. Presents a vision for the future of FAIR traumatic stress data, and a call to action for the traumatic stress research community.

Sadeh, Y, Denejkina, A, Karyotaki, E, Lenferink, LIM, & Kassam-Adams, N. (2023). Opportunities for improving data sharing and FAIR data practices to advance global mental health. Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health, 10: e14. DOI: 10.1017/gmh.2023.7

Reviews current state of FAIR data practices in global mental health research. Suggests practical steps for researchers with regard to study planning, data preservation and indexing, machine-actionable metadata, and data re-use that can advance science and improve equity.

Prakash, K, Kassam-Adams, N, Lenferink, L, & Greene, T. (2023). Data sharing and re-use in the traumatic stress field: An international survey of trauma researchers. European Journal of Psychotraumatology 14(2), 2254118. DOI: 10.1080/20008066.2023.2254118.

Results of a survey that investigated the perspectives and practices of traumatic stress researchers around the world concerning data sharing, re-use, and the implementation of FAIR data principles.

FAIR Data methods - selected publications relevant to traumatic stress data

** Indicates publications in Special FAIR Data Article Collection in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology (EJPT) resulting from TDI-funded FAIR Data Summit

Hruska, B., Piccirillo, M. L., Lenferink, L. I., Pacella-LaBarbara, M. L., Contractor, A. A., Price, M., & Greene, T. (2025). Making trauma ecological momentary assessment studies FAIR: Review of design considerations and data procedures. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 16(1), 2477423. DOI: 10.1080/20008066.2025.2477423 ** Special Article Collection EJPT

FAIR data methods for intensive longitudinal data from traumatic stress studies

Kassam-Adams, N., Thompson, K., Sijbrandij, M., & Dyb, G. (2025). Sharing traumatic stress research data: Assessing and reducing the risk of re-identification. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 16(1), 2499296. DOI: 10.1080/20008066.2025.2499296 ** Special Article Collection EJPT

Systematic approaches to reducing re-identification risk in shared traumatic stress research data

McDaniel, H.L., Saavedra, L.M., Morgan-López, A.A. et al. (2023). Harmonizing social, emotional, and behavioral constructs in prevention science: Digging into the weeds of aligning disparate measures. Prevention Science 24, 1581–1594. DOI: 10.1007/s11121-022-01467-0

Methods for logical / semantic harmonization of item-level data.

Qi, W, Ratanatharathorn, A, Gevonden, M, Bryant, R, Delahanty, D, Matsuoka, Y, Olff, M, deRoon-Cassini, T, Schnyder, U, Seedat, S, Laska, E, Kessler, R, Koenen, K, & Shalev, A. (2018). Application of data pooling to longitudinal studies of early post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): The International Consortium to Predict PTSD (ICPP) project. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 9(1). DOI: 10.1080/20008198.2018.1476442

Application of methods for harmonizing data across multiple longitudinal traumatic stress studies.

Riobueno-Naylor, A., Gomez, I., Quan, S., Hutt Vater, C., Montes, M., Hoskova, B., & Lai, B. S. (2025). Methods for integrating public datasets: Insights from youth disaster mental health research. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 16(1). DOI: 10.1080/20008066.2025.2481699 ** Special Article Collection EJPT

FAIR data methods for trauma-relevant public datasets