Metadata Driven Survey Research

METADATA DRIVENSURVEY RESEARCH

Alerk Amin, CentERdataJeremy Iverson, Colectica

What is Metadata? Data (survey data) Metadata (data about data) Paradata (data about process)

Paradata Empirical measurements about the

process of creating survey data Paradata is data

Metadata

DATASurvey data

ParadataMetadata

Why is Metadata Important? “Survey documentation and metadata

are vital products of a survey and need careful consideration at the point of survey design so that the data will be useful.”

From Survey Methodology, by Robert M. Groves, Floyd J. Fowler, Mick P. Couper, James M. Lepkowski, Eleanor Singer

AER Data Availability Policy “It is the policy of the American

Economic Review to publish papers only if the data used in the analysis are clearly and precisely documented and are readily available to any researcher for purposes of replication.”

“Current” Situation

Questionnaire Development

The Data Lifecycle

Documentation

Lost

A Better Solution Metadata-Driven Survey Research

Metadata Driven Survey Research

Metadata

Survey instrumentsPaper questionnairesStatistical source codePaper documentationWeb documentation

Questionnaire Development Better, faster, cheaper Eliminate cut-and-paste from Word/Excel Automate more of the process Metadata reuse saves even more time

and effort for longitudinal surveys

Survey Documentation Integral part of process Easier to capture work done by all

people/agencies in data collection process

Metadata Repositories Leverage metadata both inside &

outside organization Allows for

Concept Banks Question Banks Variable Banks Classification Banks

Link to other repositories when reusing questions

Researcher Questions What studies explore these concepts? What questionnaires use this question? What datasets have this variable?

Increased Understanding Improved discoverability Improved comparability Researchers understand more of data

collection process

How to do this? It’s possible today

DDI 3 Documents all stages of data lifecycle Defines elements and relationships Designed for reuse of elements Provides structured method of describing

additional data Geographic data Medical data Biomarker data

DDI Workflow

Define the metadata and relationships

Automate everything else

DDI 3 Tools

Colectica Questas

y

DDA Metadata EditorCanada

RDC Tools

STARDAT

Custom tools

Colectica

Questasy

DDA Metadata Editor

THANK YOU

Alerk Amina.amin@uvt.nl

Jeremy Iversonjeremy@colectica.com