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The data documentation initiative: a preservation standard for research

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Notes

  1. Although we focus on social science researchers, other stakeholders have an interest in the DDI: archives, funding agencies, the layman, society as a whole. Methodologically we describe the value for researchers based on the value of high-quality documentation as well as the ability easily to find relevant data.

  2. The basic problems of qualitative data are quite similar. In order to present more easily understandable description this article concentrates on quantitative data and exemplifies the problems associated with it [See the article by Louise Corti on qualitative data elsewhere in this issue; the editors].

  3. We use the somewhat vague term “match” here. It does not imply a match-merge of the two datasets at a record level nor is our intention to imply a match on similar variables. The term is used in the broadest sense where similarities and dissimilarities between the two datasets can be noticed and acted upon in the process of further research.

  4. Even where archives have completely converted their documentation to electronic form, like the largest archive, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), most documentation is only available as graphic images of the documentation pages (stored in PDF files). Such images are unsearchable. Even when the archive does optical character recognition (OCR) on the images and produces searchable text, there remain major problems. The most significant weakness is that such documentation is a stream of text that cannot support field-structured searches.

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Acknowledgements

The authors have participated in DDI development, but the DDI was developed by people representing many academic institutes, governmental agencies, and other institutions. We are thankful to these people and the many participating organizations. We are particularly grateful to Mary Vardigan and Ann Green for conversations about the DDI and for their help in finding documents describing the DDI. More information is available at the DDI website (http://www.ddialliance.org/). Development of the DDI continues: initiatives can enjoy long lives when many people enthusiastically support the effort.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230, Odense M, Denmark

    Karsten Boye Rasmussen

  2. American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC, 20016-8072, USA

    Grant Blank

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  1. Karsten Boye Rasmussen
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Correspondence to Karsten Boye Rasmussen.

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Rasmussen, K.B., Blank, G. The data documentation initiative: a preservation standard for research. Arch Sci 7, 55–71 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-006-9036-0

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