[DDI-users] ResponseDomain, ValueRepresentation, Delineations - DDI Issue 580

[Wendy Thomas]

Domain/Represntation discussion:
If you wish to be included in meeting on this issue please inform me <
wlt at umn.edu>
We will be discussing this within the next two weeks so please respond to
me ASAP.
The attached documents represent the result of a discussion among TIC at
its last meeting. The goal is to allow a continuation of the 3.1 approach
to ResponseDomains and ValueRepresntation as expressed in an XML instance
as in-line content. In addtion, 3.2 will support creating maintainable,
reusable versions of those representations (current and new) that a) have
strong protential for reuse or comparison, and b) that are NOT currently
held within a maintainable structure. This means that
CategoryRepresentation, CodeRepresentation, and new Representations based
on GeographicStructureScheme and GeographicLocationScheme will continue to
be inline only. Other new ResponseDomains with low reuse potential, such as
Location, Nominal, Rank, and Distribution will be added as in-line only
content.

The attached documents describe this proposal in more detail
(Proposal_580_representations_delineations.txt) and provide an example of
the differences between 3.1 and 3.2 for the use of ResponseDomain and
ValueRepresentation using a NumericRepresentation structure
(DomainRepresentationModification.xlsx). Documents are also attached to
Issue 580 in http://mantis.ddialliance.org.

The question that needs agreement is whether this is a workable compromise
so that we may meet the requests for comparison, reuse and new
representations without imposing excessive overhead for those whose needs
were being met with 3.1?

Wendy Thomas
for TIC

-- 
Wendy L. Thomas                              Phone: +1 612.624.4389
Data Access Core Director                 Fax:   +1 612.626.8375
Minnesota Population Center             Email: wlt at umn.edu
University of Minnesota
50 Willey Hall
225 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
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Based on the discussion in TIC on 4/18/2013 and the proposal sent out earlier in the week and posted on Mantis Issue 580 we are proposing the following as a resolution to the comments surrounding the new Response Domains, Value Representation, and Delineations. 

There are two separate issues raised in comments that center on 1) new domains and representations, and 2) the introduction of delineations to support reuse, comparison and management of the description of response domain/value representations of varying types. Note that no comments regarding the change in expressing MissingValues have been received. Changes to structuring MissingValues reflect the requirements expressed in issues filed on 3.0 and 3.1. This will stay basically as proposed with the exception to an option to capture descriptions of missing values within the MissingValueRepresentation will support in-line or referenced content.

Note that in 3.1 ValueRepresentation substitution groups use their XxxxRepresentation unchanged except for CodeRepresentation which allows sub-setting. In this case sub-setting will be moved to what is the r:CodeRepresentation in 3.1. To deal with the name duplication between l:XxxxRepresentation and r:XxxxRepresentation those in reusable have been changed to r:XxxRepresentationDescription. This content is never expressed under that name but as the extension base of d:XxxxDomain and l:XxxxReresentation.

The first issue addresses some needs expressed since the publication of 3.0 for additional representations (primarily scales, distributions, and ranking) and those that came to light when addressing the examples brought to us by various groups dealing with educational testing. Those who have been expressing scales, distributions and ranking through workarounds using CodeRepresentation or NumericRepresentation can continue to use those workarounds in 3.2 or make use of the new structures.

The structures for the existing 3.1 NumericRepresentation, TextRepresentation, GeographicRepresentation, DateTimeRepresentation, CategoryRepresentation, and CodeRepresentation will contain the same basic structures. The ability to select levels or ranges of a CodeList by CodeRepresentation (substitution group ValueRepresentation) will be moved to the base CodeRepresentation so that it is available to both a Variable and a Question. Numeric, Text, Geographic, and DateTime Representations will support use by reference as well as inline content. 

The following new representations will be supported by in-line content only: Nominal, Location, Distribution, and Ranking. It was felt that the reuse and comparison potential of the representations did not support the creation of reusable structure.

The following new representations will be supported by in-line content that references an existing managed object (similar to CategoryRepresentation and CodeRepresentation) along with the ability to further limit and refine the portion of the referenced structure that is used: GeographicLocationCodeRepresentation and GeographicStructureCodeRepresentation.

ScaleRepresentation will support both in-line description of the scale as well as the option to reference a managed ScaleRepresentation. 

MissingValues is used by reference in a number of locations and will be identifiable in all cases. The two attributes @missingValues and @blankIsMissingValue will continue to be available to ResponseDomains and ValueRepresenations in their present form.

DELINIATIONS
The primary issues raised concerning the introduction of delineations centered on the amount of overhead (additional identifiers and schemes to manage), the varying potential for reuse and comparison for a number of the new representations, and the fact that a number of the delineations basically replicated existing maintenance structures (i.e. Category, Code...)

There was recognition that there were cases (representation types) that would be very useful to create once and reuse and that we needed to the ability to map from various representation types into a CodeList or similar representation. Each representation type was evaluated regarding those uses and balanced against the overhead needs.

The following representations will offer the option to create identifiable structures that can be managed, reused and be mapped into code structures:

Numeric, Text, DateTime, Scale, MissingValues 

These will all be managed within a single new scheme ManagedRepresentationScheme which will include a ManagedRepresentationGroup to allow for administrative grouping of these representations plus CategoryScheme, CodeList, GeographicLocationScheme and GeographicStructureScheme as these form the reusable cores of their related representations.

Comparison/CodeMap will be revised to allow for the use by reference of any of these structures for mapping purposes

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