DDI (Data Documentation Initiative)
A widely used, international standard for describing data from the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. Two versions of the standard are currently maintained in parallel:
- DDI Codebook (or DDI version 2) is the simpler of the two, and intended for documenting simple survey data for exchange or archiving. Version 2.5 was released in January 2012.
- DDI Lifecycle (or DDI version 3) is richer and may be used to document datasets at each stage of their lifecycle from conceptualization through to publication and reuse. It is modular and extensible. Version 3.2 was published in March 2014.
Both versions are XML-based and defined using XML Schemas. They were developed and are maintained by the DDI Alliance.
Used in
Documentation
Responsible organizations
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Maintainer: DDI Alliance
Identifiers
- Internal MSC ID
- msc:m13
Version history
- 2014-03-12
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version 3.2 (current) – DDI Lifecycle
- 2012-01-17
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version 2.5 (current) – DDI Codebook
- 2009-10-18
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version 3.1 (deprecated on 2014-03-12) – DDI Lifecycle
- 2005-01-01
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version 2.1 (deprecated on 2014-01-29) – DDI Codebook
Tools
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The Data Documentaion Initiative website's list of tools to implement the DDI standard.
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DdiEditor is a DDI-Lifecycle Editing Framework developed by the DDA - Danish Data Archive.
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Server-side software for building a data portal, with a particular focus on survey datasets. It uses DDI to provide access to the data at the level of concepts and variables. For an example of it in use, see the SOEPinfo data portal.
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The Geodoc metadata editor tool allows users to create, validate, edit and export geospatial metadata records. It also supports the creation and export of metadata records as XML output files compliant with a number of standards, including UK AGMAP 2.1, ISO 19115, FGDC, DDI, and Dublin Core.
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A tool to enable the automated transfer of statistical data between programs. The software supports version 3.1 of the specification and will read and write XML schemas and associated delimited data files.
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Dataverse is an open source web application to share, preserve, cite, explore, and analyze research data. It facilitates making data available to others, and allows you to replicate others' work more easily. Researchers, journals, data authors, publishers, data distributors, and affiliated institutions all receive academic credit and web visibility. Dataverse has grown considerably over time and is now a major international collaborative project. We encourage you to join us.
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description:
Sharing descriptive Metadata is the first essential step towards Open Scientific Data. With this in mind, Maggot was specifically designed to annotate datasets by creating a metadata file to attach to the storage space. Indeed, it allows users to easily add descriptive metadata to datasets produced within a collective of people (research unit, platform, multi-partner project, etc.). This approach fits perfectly into a data management plan as it addresses the issues of data organization and documentation, data storage and frictionless metadata sharing within this same collective and beyond.
Known users
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The CDC is a one-stop shop for searching and discovering European social science data. The presented data includes a range of data types including quantitative, qualitative or mixed-modes data, covering both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, as well as recently collected and historical data.
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The Data Documentation Initiative website's list of projects adopting or encouraging DDI as a standard.
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Links to DDI 3 use case papers, which were the outcomes of a workshop held at the Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics in Wadern, Germany, November 2-6, 2009.
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ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research)
A data archive providing leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community; all metadata conforms to the DDI standard.
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The Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) Data Archive
Provides members of the scholarly community with access to files associated with scholarly studies for the purpose of replication, for all studies conducted by ISPS-affiliated researchers. ISPS metadata records conform to DDI requirements and include a minimal set of Dublin Core metadata elements.
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Curator of the largest collection of digital data in the social sciences and humanities in the United Kingdom, the archive uses DDI as the basis for its catalogue records.