Workshop for Doctoral Students 
 
RESEARCH DATA MANAGEMENT AND OPEN DATA 
 
6th – 7th October 2015  
University of Manchester 
DATA DOCUMENTATION AND 
CONTEXTUAL DESCRIPTIONS  
Irena Vipavc Brvar, Social Science Data Archives 
 
Content 
 
•Which things should I save and how 
• Data (part 1) 
• Documentation (part 2) 
•What tools are there 
 
 
Documentation 
Data documentation might include:  
• a survey questionnaire 
• an interview schedule 
• records of interviewees and their demographic 
characteristics in a qualitative study  
• variable labels in a table 
• published articles that provides background information 
• description of the methodology used to collect the data 
 
Source: UK Data Service 
What should be captured? 
Contextual information about project and data 
• background, project history, aims, objectives, hypotheses 
• publications based on data collection 
 
Data collection methodology and processes 
• data collection process and sampling 
• instruments used - questionnaires, showcards, interview schedules 
• temporal/geographic coverage 
• data validation - cleaning, error checking  
• compilation of derived variables 
• weighting: factors and variables, weighting process 
• secondary data sources used 
 
Data confidentiality, access and use conditions 
• anonymisation carried out  
• consent conditions/procedures 
• access or use conditions of data  Source: UK Data Service 
METADATA 
Metadata – data about data 
 
Describe your survey using standard 
International standards/schemes 
• Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) 
• ISO19115 
• Dublin Core 
• Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) 
• Preservation Metadata Maintenance Activity (PREMIS) 
 
BASIC STRUCTURE OF DDI 2.* 
- Section 1.0 ‐ Document Description consists of 
bibliographic information that can be considered as the 
header whose elements uniquely describe the full 
contents of the compliant DDI file.  
- Section 2.0 ‐ Study Description consists of information 
about the data collection. This section includes 
information about who collected and who distributes the 
data, about the scope and coverage, sampling (if 
relevant), data collection methods and processing, 
citation requirements, etc.   
 
Controlled Vocabulary Multilingual 
XML 
Semantic and technical interoperability 
BASIC STRUCTURE OF DDI 2.* 
• Section 3.0 ‐ Data Files Description provides 
information about the Data file(s).  
• Section 4.0 ‐ Variable Description provides a detailed 
description o f variables, including (when relevant) t he 
variable type, variable and value labels, literal 
questions, computation or imputation methods, 
instructions to interviewers, universe, descriptive 
statistics, etc.  
• Section 5.0 ‐ Other Study Related Materials allows for 
the inclusion of other materials related to the study such 
as questionnaires, user manuals, computer programs, 
interviewer manuals, maps, coding information, etc. 
                          Nesstar Publisher 




European Social Survey, Round 6 
EUVET 12 Survey 


7.4 International database 
One of the WP 7 products will be a publicly accessible 
international database with the corresponding 
documentation (questionnaires, technical information, 
sampling information) based on which anyone interested 
will be able to perform secondary analyses. The 
international database will be published on the web page 
and publicly after the publication of the final report. 
You can find more in  
• UKDA – Create & Manage Data 
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/create-manage 
• ICSPR – Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and 
Archiving 
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/deposit/g
uide/chapter5.html  
IHSN – Data archiving and dissemination 
http://www.ihsn.org/home/archiving  
MANTRA – Research Data Management Training 
http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/