[DDI-users] some questions about ddi elements

[Zsadányi Nagy Csaba]

Dear I-Lin and Humphrey,

thank you for your kind and helpful suggestions.

having gone through relevant ddi elements and our old sql fields, we 
realized that converting from sql to xml could be solved. (ok. it's not 
unproblematic ;-)

therefore i would rather write about some problems regarding specific 
elements.

in DocDscr section 1.1.3.1 producer element seems to be a good place to 
mention our databank as an archiving institution, can you confirm this?

and can we use distrbtr element in stdyDscr section to indicate tárki as 
the databank that distributes copies of spss data files themselves to users? 

in DocDscr and stdyDscr sections the bibliographic citation elements can
be automatically generated from other elements. on the icpsr ddi-site some 
u.s. standards are mentioned. could we use another (eg. national) standard 
to generate a different citation form?

we archived the 'creator of datafile' in our old meta-database. in my 
interpretation, mainly 2.1.3.1 producer but partly 2.3.1.2 data collector 
field corresponds with this. i know that we should really distinguish 
between the two, but we have hundreds of "ancient" studies where their 
paper-based documentations make it very difficult to find out both. so which 
one should we use if we can find out about only one?

when we archive a study, we indicate two variable count fields: one of them 
refers to the total number of variables and the other refers to the number 
of variables not under embargo. how can we make it correspond with ddi if 
we don't want to use recGrps in our data sheet?

thank you for your attention and any suggestions are welcome

best regards,
csaba

-- 

Csaba Zsadányi-Nagy
TÁRKI Databank, databank assistant

TÁRKI Social Research Center Social Science Databank
H-1112 Budapest, Budaörsi út 45.
tel: (+36-1) 309-7693, fax: (+36-1) 309-7666
web: http://www.tarki.hu/adatbank-h/
mail: zsadanyi at tarki.hu