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Data Documentation Initiative (DDI): Goals and Benefits. Mary Vardigan Director, DDI Alliance. Today’s Presentation. What is DDI? History of the effort The DDI community DDI features, benefits, examples Relationship to SDMX and GSBPM Future directions. What Is DDI?.
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Data Documentation Initiative (DDI): Goals and Benefits Mary Vardigan Director, DDI Alliance
Today’s Presentation • What is DDI? • History of the effort • The DDI community • DDI features, benefits, examples • Relationship to SDMX and GSBPM • Future directions
What Is DDI? • An international specification for structured metadata describing social, behavioral, and economic data • A standardized framework to maintain and exchange documentation/metadata • A basis on which to build software tools • Currently expressed in XML – eXtensible Markup Language
History • 1995 -- First international committee established • 2000 -- First DDI version published (aligned with codebooks, XML DTD-based) • 2003 – DDI 2 published (support for aggregate/tabular data and geography added) • 2003 -- Formation of the DDI Alliance, a self-sustaining membership organization • 2008 – DDI 3 published (aligned with data lifecycle, XML Schema-based) • 2010 – DDI rebranding – DDI Codebook (DDI 2 branch) and DDI Lifecycle (DDI 3 branch) development lines
DDI Alliance • 30 members from around the world • Modest institutional membership fee -- entitles members to help to shape the specification • Yearly meetings • Active working groups: Survey Design and Implementation, Qualitative Data • New groups: Paradata, Administrative Data, Disclosure
The DDI Community www.ddialliance.org
Projects and Organizations Using DDI • Australian Bureau of Statistics • Canadian Research Data Centres (RDC) Program • CESSDA Data Portal • DataFirst at University of Cape Town • The Dataverse Network • European Social Survey (ESS) and ESS-Edu-net • Gallup Europe
Projects and Organizations Using DDI • General Social Survey • Institute for the Study of Labor – IZA, Germany • LISS -- Longitudinal Internet studies in the Social Sciences, Netherlands • National Survey of Family Growth, US • UNICEF, Child Info – Monitoring the Situation of Children and Women • World Bank -- International Household Survey Network (IHSN) and Microdata Management Toolkit
Products of the DDI Alliance • Specifications for DDI Codebook and Lifecycle • Controlled vocabularies • Tools catalog • Training • Papers and presentations
DDI Tools • Several DDI authoring tools now available • Nesstar • IHSN Microdata Toolkit • Colectica • Tools for DDI in Research Data Centers
DDI Training and Exploration • Training available on demand in fundamentals of DDI • Advanced workshops in Germany in September 2011 • DDI and Longitudinal Data • DDI and Semantic Statistics
DDI Development Lines • DDI Codebook (DDI 2 branch) • Reflects components of social science codebooks • Includes descriptions at the study, file, and variable level • DDI Lifecycle (DDI 3 branch) • Reflects research data lifecycle • Optimized for reuse of metadata
Research Data Life Cycle • Preservation metadata • Confidentiality • Add’l processing • Data specs • Recodes • Summary descriptive info • Terms of use • Citation • Packaging info • Initial concepts • Questions and answers • Grant info • Questionnaire • Coded instrument • CAI metadata • Paradata • Catalog record • Indexing • Related publications • Replication code • Publications • Post-hoc harmonization • Data transformations
Concept Collection Processing Repurposing Custom Tools (e.g. Forms-based) CAI Tools MQDS etc. Information extracted from SPSS etc. SIP O A I S DDI as backbone for structured metadata Archive AIP Data / Documents outside of DDI DIP Distribution Packages Web information system Statistical packages Online Analysis. Search engines. Distribution Discovery Analysis
DDI Lifecycle Features • Machine-actionable • Modular and extensible • Multi-lingual • Aligned with other metadata standards • Can carry data in-line • Focused on metadata reuse
DDI Lifecycle Features • Support for CAI instruments • Support for longitudinal surveys • Focus on comparison, both by design and after-the-fact (harmonization) • Robust record and file linkages for complex data files • Support for geographic content (shape and boundary files) • Capability for registries and question banks
Example – ComparativeCollaborative Psychiatric Surveys www.icpsr.umich.edu/CPES
DDI and SDMX -- Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange • Not competing but complementary • Two standards bodies talking with each other – Recent meetings in Utrecht, Lisbon, and Washington, DC; next one in Luxembourg • Goals and use cases • Document survey process end-to-end • Drill back from macrodata to microdata • Data discovery
Future Directions • Data model development • Additional controlled vocabularies • Training in DDI and SDMX • New tools – DDI from Blaise • New versions of both Codebook and Lifecycle this year • Work starting on DDI 4.0
Questions? • Mary Vardigan – vardigan@umich.edu