Substantive Content Group

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Substantive Content Group

• Presented at IASSIST 2004
• Ilona Einowski
• University of California, Berkeley
• May 26, 2004
• Madison WI

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Substantive Content Group

• Dont Worry

• Be Happy!

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Substantive Content Group

• Member Affiliation
• Atle Alvheim Norwegian Social Science Data
  Service
• Pat Doyle U.S. Census Bureau
• Ilona Einowski University of California,
  Berkeley - UCDATA
• Janet Eisenhauer University of Wisconsin
• Fred Gey University of California, Berkeley -
  UCDATA
• Peter Granda ICPSR
• Peter Joftis ICPSR
• Ryan Johnson Washington State University
• Julie Linden Yale University
• Margaret Low California Digital Library
• Mark Maynard Roper Center
• Meinhard Moschner Zentralarchiv
• Tom Piazza University of California, Berkeley -
  CSM
• Wendy Thomas University of Minnesota
• Ed Thomson Health Canada
• Oliver Watteler Zentralarchiv

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Substantive Content Group

• Role of the SCG
• Make the DDI as complete and useful as possible
• Address issues of content and substance

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Substantive Content Group

• Goal of the SCG
• To provide expanded capabilities and
  functionality in DDI development so that
• Users have more DDI elements to cover more
  aspects/variations of study documentation
• Users have clear examples of the DDI elements

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Substantive Content Subgroups

• Aggregate Data, Geography Time
• Comparative Data
• Complex Files
• Instrument Documentation

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Aggregate Data, Geography Time Issues

• Re-evaluate aggregate/tabular extension
• Is aggregate model overly complex?
• Take geography and temporal coverage into account

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Aggregate Data, Geography Time Summary of
Activities

• Aggregate Data
• Wendy Thomas collected background material on
  current model
• Geography
• Atle Alvheim shared his research on issues
  associated with geography
• Time
• Fred Gey summarized the implications of SDMX

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Comparative Data Issues

• Must address complexity of Social Science data
• DDI documents will be used separately and in
  tandem
• Studies will be alike in some ways, different in
  other ways
• No current method to describe abstract
  statistical concepts

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Comparative Data Issues

• No current way to reference
• Comparable variables across studies
• Families" of studies - across countries,
  populations, or time
• Longitudinal data and repeated cross-sectional
  surveys

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Comparative Data Summary of Activities

• Three logical levels can be identified

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Complex Files Issues

• Current specification has never been tested
• Address rapidly changing database structures
• Anticipate and identify the needed elements,
  attributes, and linkages

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Complex Files Issues

• Relational files disseminated and documented as a
  group of files
• Documented in one DDI instance
• Documentation of the relationship included in
  that same instance

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Complex Files Summary of Activities

• The Complex Files Group has submitted a proposal
  to accommodate systems of files which can be used
  in tandem
• Two applications - same basic solution
• Relational files disseminated and documented as a
  group of files
• Groups of files that can be used together as if
  part of a relational system

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Complex Files Summary of Activities

• Two issues make it complicated
• The DDI needs to be application specific but
  general enough that an application can simply
  take advantage of the basic relationship
  documented in the DDI
• The DDI must not get bogged down in the issue of
  physical vs logical file description

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Complex Files Summary of Activities

• 2. Groups of files that can be used together as
  if part of a relational system
• All files are not issued simultaneously and
  cannot be documented in one DDI instance
• Need a to create a DDI element that describes the
  relationships among files whose documentation
  resides elsewhere

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Instrument DocumentationIssues

• Computer assisted interviewing (CAI) survey
  instruments
• No two respondents may have taken precisely the
  same questionnaire
• Question order effects may be obscured

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Instrument DocumentationIssues

• Relationship between an original question and
  resulting variables may be difficult to define or
  fully describe
• Challenging to define the universe for a specific
  question and how that universe was reached in the
  interview

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Instrument DocumentationSummary of Activities

• Focused on the problem of documenting the
  questions posed to observations included in a
  survey for which there exists microdata or
  tabular data to be documented in DDI format

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Instrument DocumentationSummary of Activities

• Two types of questionnaires to address
• Paper forms
• Computer assisted interviews
• Two types of needs for the same documentation
• Study level
• Item level

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Instrument DocumentationSummary of Activities

• Needs to be accompanied by documentation of post
  collection processing procedures
• Post collection processing procedures need to be
  linked at the variable and study level (cross
  walk)
• This cross walk might be a separate DDI instance

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Instrument DocumentationSummary of Activities

• Concluded that the DDI has sufficient elements to
  accommodate generic instrument documentation -
  not the details specific to a given authoring
  system
• Focuses in on how one creates a DDI instance from
  instrument documentation

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Do Your Best Then Dont WorryBe Happy!