[DDI-users] [DDI-UOG-Chair] Adopting DDI for a survey

[Wendy Thomas]

Stein,

I am assuming this may be part of the larger project ABS is undertaking. 
You may wish to talk to Alistair Hamilton at ABS as he is one of the 
people involved in setting up some addtional training etc within ABS on 
DDI.

If you are focusing on variables you may wish to look at some of the SPSS 
and SAS to DDI 3 tools like DeXT and one by Achim Wackerow. These are on 
the ddi tools page http://tools.ddialliance.org/?lvl1=library

This will let you see where elements you are familier with from 
statistical packages reside within a DDI instance.

Coming from a questionnaire perspective I would suggest talking to the 
developers at Algenta  (Jeremy Iverson <jeremy at algenta.com>). While their 
tool is commercial they have a beta version you should be able to use and 
again create DDI output that will provide you with a better sense of how 
the content is arranged.

If you have not already done so, download the schema package. It contains 
both an Overview and Users Guide which may be helpful. I don't know how 
helpful the current set of best practices will be 
http://www.ddialliance.org/DDI/bp/ as they don't tend to deal with this 
basic use case.

If you have specific question, either post them to the list or directly to 
me. I chair the Technical Implimentation Committee and provide user 
support to DDI.

Wendy Thomas


On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Katherine McNeill wrote:

> Stein,
>
> Thank you for your interest, and I'm also forwarding your message to the DDI Users email list, where other users (many of whom I know have experience in Blaise) can respond to your question as well.  There is a particular section of the DDI that would be use to document the variables (specifically in the logical product module: http://gandalf.opendatafoundation.org/infocenter/topic/net.sf.ddialliance.help/html/modules/ddi3_logicalproduct.html), whereas most of the other elements document other contextual information about the data (collection, storage formats, etc.).
>
> As for tools, there's a simple DDI editor tool at: http://www.ddialliance.org/DDI/ddi3/editor-lite-3/DDI_v2dot2.html
> Within the DDI Tools project page (http://tools.ddialliance.org/?lvl1=library) you can view a list of XML examples, and the first one in the list shows examples of markup of variables.
>
> And I believe that others who respond to your question will be able to provide even more detailed guidance.
>
> Sincerely,
> Katherine McNeill
>
> From: ddi-uog-chair-bounces at ddialliance.org [mailto:ddi-uog-chair-bounces at ddialliance.org] On Behalf Of Steinberg Tan
> Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 9:37 PM
> To: ddi-uog-chair at icpsr.umich.edu
> Cc: Steinberg Tan
> Subject: [DDI-UOG-Chair] Adopting DDI for a survey
>
> Hi,
>
> My name's Steinberg and I work for the Australian Bureau of Statistics.  I am currently involved in a pilot project to see if we can map a small survey to DDI standard.  I've been reading some of the papers and presentations on the net but am still a bit confused about how we go about mapping it.
>
> Our current system (end-to-end system) consists of various components from our data store (star schema) to Blaise (edits and data entry) and many others in-between.  For this pilot project, our initial goal is to map every variable in the survey form to DDI - I'm writing to ask if there are any tools that will allow me to do this easily or any samples that I can work through.  I initially looked at the basic structure of DDI and there are a lot of elements to choose from for me to know whether I'm mapping things correctly or not.
>
> Kind Regards,
> Stein
>

Wendy L. Thomas                          Phone: +1 612.624.4389
Data Access Core Director		 Fax:   +1 612.626.8375
Minnesota Population Center              Email: wlt at pop.umn.edu
University of Minnesota
50 Willey Hall
225 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455