[DDI-users] Marking variables mandatory in DDI3

[Mari Kleemola]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a machine-actionable way to mark in DDI3 that a variable 
is mandatory. An example case would be register data, where the 
informants are required to give certain information and the metadata 
would be used to check that mandatory variables actually contain 
information.

One solution that comes to mind is to create a VariableGroup and use 
@GroupType and a term from a controlled vocabulary to indicate that the 
variables in this group are mandatory. On the other hand if there's only 
one mandatory variable creating a group feels like an overkill, but I 
did not find a place for this kind of information in the variable level.

Thanks for any suggestions,
Mari

-- 
Mari Kleemola
Information Services Manager
FSD Finnish Social Science Data Archive
33014  UNIVERSITY OF TAMPERE, FINLAND

tel. +358 40 190 1437 / www.fsd.uta.fi