[DDI-users] DDI Directions Volume VII, Number 3, July 2014

[mcianna at umich.edu]

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 From the Director

This issue of DDI Directions provides a look at some of the events and  
developments taking place in the DDI community over the past few months. As  
always, thanks go to all of the hardworking people who support DDI and are  
helping to spread its adoption.

Mary Vardigan, Director, DDI Alliance, vardigan at umich.edu


In This Issue


New Officers Lead DDI Scientific Board
Members Join the Alliance
New DDI Representatives in Place
Meeting of Members Held in Toronto
Second Annual NADDI Conference Held in Vancouver
New Collaboration Site Established for DDI Moving Forward Project
NADDI Sprint Results in Important Outcomes
DDI Modeling Work Taking Place Online
IASSIST Session Focuses on DDI Tools
New DDI Profiles Resources Available
New RDF Vocabularies Under Review
Copenhagen Mapping Out for Review
New DDI Controlled Vocabulary Published
DDI Handbook Project Begins
Meeting on Documenting Data Transformations Held in Ann Arbor
Colectica To Develop Data Curation Software With Yale ISPS and Innovations  
for Poverty Action

Volume VII, Number 3, July 2014

New Officers Lead DDI Scientific Board
Adam Brown and Steve McEachern
In May, the DDI Alliance chose officers to oversee the Scientific Board,  
the arm of the Alliance that has responsibility for shaping the DDI  
specifications. The new officers are Adam Brown, Statistics New Zealand,  
Chair, and Steve McEachern, Australian Data Archive, Vice Chair.





Members Join the Alliance

The DDI Alliance recently welcomed two new member institutions into the  
membership:


The ITMO Sante Publique, Aviesan -- Epidemiology France Portal. Simon  
Saint-Georges will serve as the Member Representative and Mari Lhosmot as  
the Scientific Board Representative.
The University of Kansas, Institute for Policy & Social Research (IPSR)  
(Associate Member). Larry Hoyle will be the Member Representative.

New DDI Representatives in Place

Three new DDI representatives have recently taken over this position for  
their organizations: Nicole Kirgis is now the representative for University  
of Michigan, Survey Research Operations, and Anne Sofie Fink Kjeldgaard is  
now representing the Danish Data Archive. Vigdis Kvalheim is the new  
representative for the Norwegian Social Science Data Service.

Meeting of Members Held in Toronto

The DDI Alliance met in Toronto on June 2 with the morning devoted to  
administrative matters and the afternoon focused on substantive concerns.  
Chair Gillian Nicoll (Australian Bureau of Statistics) led the Meeting of  
Members and Scientific Board Vice Chair Steve McEachern (Australian Data  
Archive) chaired the first official meeting of the Scientific Board.

Scene from DDI Meeting of Members
Photo by Sanda Ionescu

Scene from DDI Meeting of Members: From left, Catharina Wasner (GESIS),
Dan Gillman (Bureau of Labor Statistics), Wolfgang Zenk-Möltgen (GESIS),
Kelly Chatain (Survey Research Operations, University of Michigan),
Jannik Jensen (Danish National Archive), Tom Piazza (University of  
California, Berkeley)

Second Annual NADDI Conference Held in Vancouver

The 2nd Annual North American DDI Users Conference took place in Vancouver  
on March 31-April 2, 2014. Organized by the University of British Columbia,  
Simon Fraser University, University of Alberta Libraries, and the Institute  
for Policy and Social Research at the University of Kansas, the meeting was  
held at Simon Fraser University, with the theme "Documenting Reproducible  
Research."

Ann Green discusses DDI and data quality at NADDI
Ann Green discusses DDI and data quality at NADDI 2014.

The Keynote Speaker for the conference was Ann Green. Ann spoke about  
committing to data quality and the need for "intelligent openness" with  
respect to providing access to data. The conference program featured 20  
sessions on a wide range of topics. Training workshops were held on Monday,  
March 31: Jane Fry, Carleton University, provided an introduction to DDI in  
the morning, showcasing the power of DDI metadata; in the afternoon Barry  
Radler, University of Wisconsin, and David Johnson, University of Kansas,  
led a session on the use of DDI to document health-related data.

The conference hosted around 40 participants from five Canadian provinces,  
eight US states, and three countries.

NADDI presentations are now online.

New Collaboration Site Established for DDI Moving Forward Project

DDI 4 Project Manager Thérèse Lalor of the Australian Bureau of Statistics  
has implemented a communication platform for the DDI community to encourage  
progress on DDI 4. There is a great deal of information on the site,  
including a slide deck for lay audiences called "Explain DDI 4 to Me,"  
information on all of the sprints, and plans for future work.

NADDI Sprint Results in Important Outcomes

A "sprint" was held in Vancouver, BC, Canada, the week of March 24, just  
before the NADDI conference, with the goal of accelerating progress on DDI  
4 content modeling. Led by Project Manager Thérèse Lalor, the sprint  
participants accomplished a lot. One important outcome of the meeting was  
that a new architecture for DDI 4 was specified. This innovative approach  
involves a Library of DDI elements and Functional Views on the Library.  
Functional Views are similar to DDI profiles in that they are subsets of  
the full Library. They focus on common use cases - for example, the set of  
DDI elements needed for data discovery, a simple codebook, a simple  
instrument, etc.

Participants wrote a paper that describes this approach and further  
develops the technical framework for generating XML and RDF representations  
of DDI 4. More about the sprint is available on the DDI collaboration site.

DDI Modeling Work Taking Place Online

Olof Olsson of the Swedish National Data Service (SND) has set up a Web  
site for DDI 4 modelers to enter information about DDI elements (see  
lion.ddialliance.org). Based on the properties and relationships entered,  
UML model graphs can be generated. The Web site, implemented using the  
Drupal content management system, makes the development of DDI more  
transparent and open.

graph representing data discovery elements in DDI 4

Section of a graph representing data discovery elements in DDI 4 on the  
lion.ddialliance.org site

IASSIST Session Focuses on DDI Tools

A session on "No Tools, No Standard - Software from the DDI Community" was  
held during the IASSIST conference, which took place in Toronto, Ontario,  
June 3-6. This session, which led off with a presentation on the DDI  
developers community, provided a summary of some of the tools and  
functionality now available for DDI.


Samuel Spencer, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, presented the  
Canard Questionnaire Suite, which is designed to produce and publish  
well-documented questionnaires using DDI metadata. The target audience for  
this tool, which has a drag-and-drop, point-and click interface, is  
researchers and statisticians. Built using XSLT plug-ins, the tool can  
export DDI as XForms, DDI 3.1, and 3.2, as well as other XML and text  
formats.
Ingo Barkow (TBA21 and DIPF) provided a first look at the generic DDI-L  
version of the Rogatus Survey/Case Management System. Rogatus, which means  
"respondent" in Latin, has two parts: Rogatus Survey, and Rogatus  
Repository (for dissemination and preservation). Based on the Generic  
Longitudinal Business Process Model (GLBPM), Rogatus covers the entire  
lifecycle, including managing fieldwork and designing and translating  
questionnaires.
Olof Olsson, Johan Fihn, Akira Olsbanning (Swedish National Data Service)  
and Jannik Jensen (Danish National Archive) provided updates on XSLT  
stylesheets for DDI that transform DDI XML into other formats. The  
stylesheets, which are free, support MARCXML (a schema based on MARC 21);  
DataCite version 3.0; DDI-to-XHTML interactive codebook; transformations  
from DDI Lifecycle to DDI Codebook, including HTML-formatted fields; and  
Nesstar and IHSN codebook formats. All transforms are available online for  
uploaded DDI Lifecycle files.
Andrew DeCarlo (Metadata Technology North America) presented the  
OpenDataforge Tools Suite, which consists of several DDI-based tools.  
Sledgehammer reads statistical packages and creates DDI metadata; Caelum  
generates reports and codebooks, as well as other documentation; and Caster  
works with databases (MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, HSQL, Postgres, and  
Sybase) to generate standard documentation (DDI, Triple-S) and statistical  
package set-up files.
Dan Smith (Colectica) presented the Colectica 5 (now with DDI 3.2)  
software, which has several new features, including support for aggregate  
data (NCubes); quality reporting; a translatable user interface; and  
support for user-created add-ins. There are new survey features as well:  
new question types (grids, question blocks, rankings, distributions,  
scales); flowchart visualization of survey flow logic; and parameters and  
bindings for describing processing in instruments. Colectica 5 supports  
Blaise, RedCap, and paper questionnaires.
Marcel Hebing (DIW Berlin - German Institute for Economic Research)  
discussed two utilities he has developed: DDI on Rails for SOEP (German  
Socio-Economic Panel Study) and r2DDI, both of which are open source  
implementations. DDI on Rails supports the entire data lifecycle for  
researchers using SOEP data. It integrates the Solr search and metadata  
cross-tabulations to examine how variable labels, values, and questions  
have changed over time. The r2DDI program is a script generator that works  
on a basket of requested variables.
Olof Olsson and Jannik Jensen presented an update on the DDI-RDF Tool  
(Disco), which resulted from DDI Hackathons held in 2013. The tool, which  
translates DDI to the RDF Discovery vocabulary (Disco), is based on a  
deployed SPARQL Web service endpoint (Jena).

New DDI Profiles Resources Available

Two new tools (XSLT stylesheets) developed by Joachim Wackerow are now  
available for DDI Profiles. One creates a DDI Profile template on the basis  
of an existing DDI instance. The other renders a DDI Profile in HTML,  
including links to the field-level documentation of the used elements.  
Versions for DDI 3.1 and 3.2 are available.

Also, a set of DDI Profiles has been developed by the community working  
with the Generic Statistical Information Model (GSIM). These profiles are  
intended to harmonize the use of DDI in statistical organizations and to  
help ensure that GSIM implementations using DDI will interoperate. As part  
of the GSIM work, DDI Profiles were developed for Basic Technical Objects,  
Variable, Represented Variable, Questionnaire, and Codelist.

New RDF Vocabularies Under Review

Three new RDF vocabularies - DDI-RDF Discovery (Disco), Physical Data  
Description (PHDD), and Extended Knowledge Organization System (XKOS) -  
have been created and are now out for public technical review. The  
vocabularies are scheduled to be finalized by the end of the year.

Copenhagen Mapping Out for Review

The Copenhagen Mapping is an effort to implement GSIM 1.1 Statistical  
Classifications using the new DDI 3.2. This work started at a  
Classifications workshop hosted by Statistics Denmark in December, and also  
included participants from Statistics Sweden, the Danish Data Archive, and  
Colectica. A first draft of the Copenhagen Mapping has been completed, and  
the authors are looking for feedback.

New DDI Controlled Vocabulary Published

The DDI Alliance Controlled Vocabularies Working Group (DDI-CVG) is pleased  
to announce the publication of a new controlled vocabulary for describing  
the Mode of (data) Collection. For more information regarding the use of  
the controlled vocabularies published by the DDI Alliance, and the work of  
the DDI-CVG please see the Controlled Vocabularies section on the DDI  
Alliance Web site.

DDI Handbook Project Begins

Organized by Joachim Wackerow and supported by GESIS-Leibniz Institute for  
the Social Sciences, a group met in Cologne during the week of November  
11-15, 2013, to launch a new project with the aim of producing a collection  
of best practices for using DDI. These best practice descriptions will be  
modular with a homogeneous format, allowing reorganization in multiple  
ways. The primary structure for the collection will be organized in  
alignment with the DDI Lifecycle. A goal will be to involve the DDI  
community in producing a shared body of resources for all organizations and  
individuals using the DDI specification. Best practices will be reviewed by  
a team of editors and reviewers and published on a dedicated Web site.

The project will produce guidelines for institutions introducing DDI into  
their workflows and for other institutions already using DDI Codebook and  
shifting some of their workflows to DDI Lifecycle, particularly in the area  
of archival processing activities. Others contributing to the activity  
include Peter Granda (ICPSR), Larry Hoyle (University of Kansas, Institute  
for Policy and Social Research), Catharina Wasner (GESIS), and Wolfgang  
Zenk-Möltgen (GESIS).

Joachim Wackerow gave a presentation on the Handbook at IASSIST in June.

Meeting on Documenting Data Transformations Held in Ann Arbor

On June 9-10, a group of international experts met in Ann Arbor, MI, to  
discuss requirements for tools to document data transformations in DDI.  
With support from NSF and the World Bank, the meeting focused on defining a  
standard language for describing data transformations. While a  
system-independent language currently under development was considered, the  
group decided to create a new standard appropriate for variable-level  
transformations. To that end, a list of the fundamental data transformation  
commands in each of the four main statistical packages (SAS, SPSS, Stata,  
and R) was compiled and consolidated. The group intends to continue on as a  
DDI working group and the group's output will be integrated into the DDI  
modeling efforts. Tools will be developed in a future phase of the project,  
and they will support both DDI Codebook and DDI Lifecycle.

Colectica To Develop Data Curation Software With Yale ISPS and Innovations  
for Poverty Action

Colectica is partnering with the Institution for Social and Policy Studies  
(ISPS) at Yale University and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) to  
develop a repository for research data from randomized controlled trials in  
the social sciences. The repository will be an expansion - and major  
upgrade - of the existing ISPS Data Archive. The main objective of this  
project is the technical integration of the various curation processes with  
inventory management, metadata workflow, and Web access.

"DDI 3.2 Lifecycle allows precise description of curation and data archival  
operations over time," said Jeremy Iverson, a partner at Colectica. "We are  
pleased to be working with ISPS and IPA on this exciting project."

Colectica and the partners will develop a software platform that allows  
archives to leverage the DDI 3.2 standard for data documentation and to  
structure the curation workflow, which includes checking data for  
confidentiality and completeness, creating preservation formats, and  
reviewing and verifying code. The new integrated system will combine  
several open source and off-the-shelf components with a new, web-based  
ISPS-IPA Data Pipeline application, and will enable a seamless framework  
for collecting, processing, archiving, and publishing data.


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