TalkBank Data Access Levels

In accord with the data management and Open Science standards of NIH/s Office of Data Science strategy (ODSS) TalkBank data is available through these four levels, as defined by ODSS. Specifically:
  1. Open access: The web pages at sites such as https://childes.talkbank.org describing the corpora as well as analysis programs such as CLAN, Chatter, and Batchalign are open with no access restrictions or registration required.
  2. Registration required: CHILDES transcript and media data on this level are open to all, but users need to be signed in or registered. To do this, users provide their email and create a password. They then receive an email message asking them to confirm registration and then they are registed. Once this is done, much of TalkBank data are available for access through download or browsing in the TalkBank browser.
  3. Approved access: This level of access is provided to academic researchers with a verified university or research lab position who send us an email request in which they agree to follow the Ground Rules for data usage at https://talkbank.org/0share/rules.html. This form of access is used for the banks with clinical data (AphasiaBank, DementiaBank, FluencyBank, TBIBank, and RHDBank) as well as for most of HomeBank.
  4. Controlled access: Controlled access is required for some corpora and media. For example, corpora in HomeBank and PsychosisBank require this level along with a special interview process and proof of CITI training.

TalkBank materials have already received IRB review at the contributor's home institution and no further IRB approval is needed for use of these data. Avoidance of such "double review" is in accord with basic IRB standards for data-sharing.

We use the TalkBank AdminView system at https://sla2.talkbank.org/AdminView to control access. The creation of the AdminView system was funded by a FAIR grant in 2023 from ODSS.

It is possible to set up a system in which the data contributor implements a data use agreement (DUA) which then allows TalkBank to provide access. However, because of the extra administrative burden for all parties and the fact that this system is not approved by NIH, we have not used this method.