Data Handling: 
Documentation, Organization and Storage
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International Lizenz.
Sebastian Netscher
CESSDA Training at the Data Archive for the Social Sciences
GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
@CESSDA_Data
Data 
Documentation
Research
Study 
planning
Data 
collectionData analysis
Archiving & 
registering
Why Data Documentation?
What do the
codes mean?
What‘s the study 
about, by whom 
was it conducted, 
etc.?
Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), www.cses.org.
keep your data understandable
Levels of Data Documentation
• Study level
– study description
– study design
– data processing
• Variable level
– questionnaire
– variables and codes
Image by A. Herrema & H. Bouwteam (CC-by)
Structured versus Unstructured Metadata
Unstructured documentation
− technical reports etc.
− questionnaire, show cards,
interviewer instructions etc.
− codebook etc.
Standardized forms 
for standardized information
− coding schemas, 
e.g. ISCO, ISCED etc.
− international metadata 
standards, e.g. DDI
• International standard for the 
description of data 
– DDI-Codebook (DDI2)
⇒ based on the codebook
– DDI-Lifecycle (DDI3)
⇒ based on the (DDI) data 
lifecycle
The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI)
Source: http://www.ddialliance.org/
Persistent Identifiers (PIDs)
• Persistent identifiers 
– provide permanency 
– assure unique retrieval of data
– assign citation for reuse
• The DOI system 
– controlled by IDF
(International DOI 
Foundation) 
– DOI Resolver, 
e.g. http://www.doi.org/index.html
da|ra Schema: Main Categories
General Resource Type
Title Other Titles
Collective Title 
Creator
URL 
DOI Proposal
Version 
Language 
Publication Date 
Alternative Identifier 
Classification Internal 
Keywords (controlled) 
Keywords (free)
Description 
Geographic Coverage
Sampled Universe
Sampling 
Temporal Coverage
Time Dimension 
Contributor
Collection Mode (controlled) 
Collection Mode (free) 
Dataset
Notes
Availability (controlled)
Availability (free)
Rights
Relation
Publications
Publication Place
Source: http://www.da-ra.de/fileadmin/media/da-ra.de/PDFs/MDS_Table_3_1_201503_en.pdf
Organizing 
Folders and Files
Research
Study 
planning
Data 
collectionData analysis
Archiving & 
registering
• Systematically managing folders 
– saves time and effort
– simplifies the use (collaborative projects)
– protects your folders and files from accidental clean-up
• Hierarchical structure of folders 
– structure by topic, data type etc.
• Develop standards early in the project
⇒ use these standards consistently within a project
Structuring Folders
• File names 
– can contain various information, e.g. title of project, 
editor‘s name, date of creation, version etc. 
– neither include punctuation characters 
or blanks nor be too long
• File versioning
– as a part of the file names, 
e.g. including the date or numbering the files
– included in the header of the file
– in a separate log-file 
File Names and Versions
(Recommended) File Formats
Type of data Recommended formats Acceptable formats
Tabular data 
with extensive metadata
SPSS portable format (.por)
delimited text and command ('setup') 
file (SPSS, Stata, SAS, etc.)
SPSS (.sav); Stata (.dta); MS Access 
(.mdb/.accdb)
Tabular data 
with minimal metadata
comma-separated (.csv); 
tab-delimited file (.tab)
MS Excel (.xls/.xlsx); MS Access 
(.mdb/.accdb), 
dBase (.dbf); OpenDocument (.ods)
Textual data Rich Text Format (.rtf); plain text, ASCII (.txt)
HTML(.html); MS Word (.doc/.docx); 
software-specific formats, e.g. NUD*IST or
NVivo
Image data TIFF 6.0 uncompressed (.tif) JPEG (.jpeg, .jpg); RAW image format (.raw), 
Photoshop (.psd); PDF/A or PDF (.pdf)
Audio data Free Lossless Audio Codec (.flac) MPEG-1 (.mp3); Waveform (.wav)
Video data MPEG-4 (.mp4); JPEG 2000 (.mj2)
Documentation and 
scripts
Rich Text Format (.rtf); PDF/A or PDF 
(.pdf); HTML (.htm); OpenDocument 
(.odt)
plain text (.txt); MS Word (.doc/.docx), MS 
Excel (.xls/.xlsx); XML (.xml) 
Source: UK DATA Service, http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/manage-data/format/recommended-formats
Data Storage 
and Security
Research
Study 
planning
Data 
collectionData analysis
Archiving & 
registering
Back-Up
• Digital media are fallible 
• A back-up is an additional 
copy that can be used to 
restore originals
• Backing-up implies 
having a back-up strategy
Image by A. Herrema & H. Bouwteam (CC-by)
• A systematic back-up strategy defines
a) what ⇒ all, some, just changes …
b) where ⇒ external, local, remote copies …
c) how often ⇒ at least in triplicates
d) for how long ⇒ how long are things needed
e) responsibility ⇒ automate the back-up process
• Verify and recover your back-ups
⇒ never assume, regularly test a restore
• Treat back-ups the same as the original files
Towards a Back-up Strategy
Image by P. Hochstenbach (CC-by)
Data Protection
• Protect your data from unauthorized 
access, use, change, disclosure, 
destruction etc.
• Take care of personal data 
– data protection legislation 
(EU Directive 1995/46/EC)
– separate personal data 
from other data
• Use passwords and encryption
• A strong password has
– eight to fifteen characters 
or even more
– a random distribution 
of characters 
• Combine… 
… upper case letters: A - Z
… lower case letters: a - z
… numerals: 0 - 9
… special characters: ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : etc.
Passwords
Image: CC-0
Encryption
• Helps maintain the security of data and documentation
– uses an algorithm to transform information
– requires a “key” to decrypt
• For example, encrypt ZIP files 
securely using 7Zip
Further Readings
• Aryal, M. (ed.) (2012): Speak Safe. Media Workers’ Toolkit for Safer Online and Mobile Practices. 
https://www.internews.org/sites/default/files/ resources/Internews_SpeakSafeToolkit.pdf
• Borgmann, M., Hahn, T., Herfert, M., Kunz, T., Richter, M., Viebeg, U., and Vowé, S. (2012): On the Security of Cloud 
Storage Services. Frauenhofer Institut, SIT Technical Report. https://www.sit.fraunhofer.de/fileadmin/dokumente/ 
studien_und_technical_reports/Cloud-Storage-Security_a4.pdf.
• Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, 24 October 1995. Available at:  http://eur-
lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do? uri=CELEX:31995L0046:EN:NOT
• Gregory, A., Heus, P., & Ryssevik, J., 2009, Metadata. Berlin. 
http://www.ratswd.de/download/workingpapers2009/57_09.pdf.
• Miller, K., & Vardigan, M., 2005, How Initiative Benefits the Research Community - the Data Documentation 
Initiative. In First International Conference on e-Social Science, Manchester, UK, June 2005. 
http://www.ddialliance.org/sites/default/files/miller.pdf. 
• National Information Standards Organization, 2004, Understanding Metadata (p. 17). Bethesa, MD: NISO 
Press. www.niso.org/standards/resources/UnderstandingMetadata.pdf. 
• Plant, R. R., 2012, How to add metadata to your data so that you and others can make sense of it. 
Retrieved from http://www.shef.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.158828!/file/Metadatav6.pdf. 
• Starr, J., 2011, DataCite Metadata Schema for the Publication and Citation of Research Data (p. 29). 
doi:10.5438/0005
• Vardigan, M., Heus, P., & Thomas, W., 2008, Data Documentation Initiative: Toward a Standard for the 
Social Sciences. International Journal of Digital Curation, 3(1), 107–113. doi:10.2218/ijdc.v3i1.45. 
DMP Sections 2 and 3

 work in 3 groups, 

 time: about 30 minutes
 choose one of the 
following topics
DMP Sections 2 & 3
a) documentation (Section 2), considering …
… what information is needed
… how you (will) capture this information
b) data storage and back-ups (Section 3.1), 
developing a back-up strategy, i.e. …
… what, where and how often / long it is backed-up
… how are back-ups verified
c) managing folders and files (Section 3.3), considering …
… how you will organize your folders
… how you will name and version your files
DMP Section 2: Documentation
• study description
– study‘s aim, primary researcher (and funders), population and 
sampling procedures, method of data collection, data cleaning 
and anonymization etc.
⇒ technical and methodological report
• variable description
– questionnaire: original question wording and provided answer 
categories, explanations, interviewer instructions; 
– variables: labels and meanings of variables and codes, 
variable notes, scales etc.
⇒ codebook, questionnaire and labels in the dataset
DMP Section 3.1: Back-up
• developing a back-up strategy
⇒ defining clear and consistent guidelines
– what: all, something, only changed files
– where: at least in triplicates and different locations
– how long are different files (and versions) needed
never destruct or overwrite original data 
– who: name researcher(s) and assign responsibilities
⇒ verify back-ups frequently (e.g. once a week), 
e.g. restoring the files (name researcher(s) and 
responsibilities)
DMP Sections 3.3: Organizing …
• developing guidelines to organize …
… folders
– define a consistent structure of folders
⇒ e.g. by topic
… and files, i.e. define a consistent strategy 
– to name files
⇒ e.g. [type_name_version]
– to version files
⇒ e.g. by the date and editor’s acronyms
– data_RDMData_20150822sn