News

Dear DDI community:

At the June DDI Annual Meeting of Members, the Executive Board proposed a series of marketing campaigns aimed at specific user audiences, starting with Statistical Agencies.  We are now ready to take this forward and invite everyone from the DDI community to participate -- especially those from Statistical Agencies.

We are convening an initial meeting to develop ideas that will engage the wider statistical community, aiming to increase awareness, adoption, and membership.

Meeting Details:

Date: July 23, 2024

Time: 9am EDT

Registration: Click here to register (you will receive the Zoom link after registration)

This initiative aligns with several key objectives outlined in our new Strategic Plan:

1. Understand DDI users
2. Build community through products and events
3. Renew active and engaged membership at the institutional level
4. Develop audience-specific training materials
5. Build partnerships with other standards
6. Generate valuable insights for our product groups

​We look forward to your participation and valuable contributions.  For more information or any questions, please email: secretariat@ddialliance.org.

Sincerely,

Jon Johnson 

DDI Executive Board Chair

EDDI 2024 is organised jointly by the Swiss Institute for Information Science (SII), at the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons, GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and IDSC of IZA - International Data Service Center of the Institute for the Study of Labor.

It will be hosted by the Swiss Institute for Information Science in Chur, Switzerland from Monday 2 to Friday 6 December 2024 as an in-person event:

Tutorials and Workshops: Monday 2 December 2024

Conference: Tuesday 3 December - Wednesday 4 December 2024

Side Meetings: Thursday 5 December - Friday 6 December 2024

How to submit

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If you are interested in submitting a proposal, please visit the EDDI 2024 Conference Website. [https://bit.ly/eddi-2024] The deadline for submissions is 2 September 2024, 23:59 CEST.

The 16^th European DDI Users Conference

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The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) is an international standard for describing the data produced by surveys and other observational methods in the social, behavioral, economic, and health sciences. The meeting will bring together DDI users and professionals from all over Europe and the world. Anyone interested in developing, applying, or using DDI is invited to attend and present.

We are seeking proposals on all things DDI:

Case Studies

Mature implementations

Early Implementations

Interplay of DDI with other standards or technologies

Projects in early phases in which DDI is under consideration

Critiques of DDI

Community building activities

Proposed topics of the conference

We expect that many presentations will cross over between topic areas but that should not discourage proposals. Please also note that the possible topics are not exclusive to those listed:

User Needs, Efficient Infrastructures and Improved Quality

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Rich, standard-based metadata can a) improve the fulfilment of the need for better documentation for researchers and other users; b) improve efficiency by providing infrastructures that drive data collection, data processing and dissemination (e.g. metadata-portals); c) improve quality of our products and processes. The growth of European Research Infrastructure Consortiums (ERICs) and the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) has raised the importance for metadata as underlying technology for the functioning of European Research. Proposals describing innovative solutions covering the parts of or the whole life-cycle from collection to dissemination based on metadata are encouraged. Proposals focusing on metadata driven production are welcomed as well.

Official Statistics

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National and international statistical organizations share a need for inter-related standards like the Generic Statistical Business Process Model (GSBPM), the Generic Activity Model for Statistical Organizations (GAMSO), the Generic Statistical Information Model (GSIM), the Common Statistical Production Architecture (CSPA), DDI, and SDMX. We welcome proposals with a focus on the use and development of standards in official statistics.

Interoperability, Reusing and Sharing Metadata

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DDI is strongly focused on the principles of metadata re-use and interoperability. “Enter once and use many times” is a powerful paradigm that can lead to improved fulfilment of user needs, improved quality and improved efficiency. The FAIR principles emphasise the use of formal, accessible, shared and broadly applicable language for knowledge representation and use of vocabularies and references. Proposals that demonstrate achieving interoperability using DDI, interaction with other metadata standards, or innovative ways to reuse, share and harmonize metadata are welcomed.

(Meta)Data Harmonization

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(Meta)data harmonization can maximize the value of large-scale population research in health and social sciences for both documentation and processing purposes. DDI has rich metadata constructs such as Concept, Comparison, Group, ConceptualVariable and RepresentedVariable in DDI 3.x. We encourage proposals which describe projects utilizing DDI or exploring DDI as a basis for harmonizing (meta)data.

Incentives to Document Data

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The advantage of having good documentation on data is rarely challenged, but it is often left as the last thing (or maybe not even that) to do on a research project. This is because the benefits for researchers come largely from publication and not from the data itself. In this context, changing both the culture and the rewards for documentation and sharing of data might be seen as key motivators. We encourage proposals exploring this topic with the focus on DDI and metadata.

Open Data, Metadata and Linked Open Data

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As the “Open Data” movement – which aims to make data more freely available – gains more and more attention in science and humanities, especially in the area of government data, the value of data that are easy to access and not limited by restrictive licenses is acknowledged. By using “Linked Open Data” or “Knowledge Graphs” technologies the ability to create reproducible and transparent research is enabled. For both, high quality metadata that is standardized and machine-actionable, like DDI metadata, is crucial. We encourage proposals in the area of Open Data and Linked Open Data with a focus on DDI.

The sharing of data or metadata is sometimes restricted due to privacy issues or property rights. Especially, but not exclusively, in health research there is the need to protect the privacy of persons to whom the data refer. In social sciences and humanities, data can contain copyrighted material like texts and photos. Access rights can be determined by well standardized metadata. Thus good metadata management enables the protection of research participants’ and researchers’ rights and ensures an organisation’s investment in data and metadata. We encourage proposals in the area of concepts or implementations of privacy and access control issues with a focus on DDI.

Metadata versus Data and Related Ethics

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In the case of surveys, there is usually a clear distinction between data and metadata. However, for example, in the context of qualitative research the boundary between data and metadata is less clear-cut. This issue also arises with big data sources like Facebook and other social media. Ultimately what is perceived to be data and what is perceived to be metadata is defined by research questions. This poses some difficult questions for research ethics when release, use and access to data usually have governance, yet metadata conceivably does not. We encourage proposals focusing on this area of tension with the background of DDI.

Machine Learning, AI and Automation

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Machine learning and AI technologies offer the potential to create, evaluate and enhance metadata reducing the manual labor often associated with metadata production. We encourage proposals which address the use and limitations of these technologies with a focus on DDI and related metadata such as ontologies, thesauri, controlled vocabularies and classifications.

Software / Tools

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The acceptance and adoption of a “standard” depends on the availability of re-usable tools and software to utilize it. Many new tools that leverage DDI are emerging, and they target different parts of the data life cycle. We encourage proposals showcasing tools and software which make use of DDI or parts of it.

Submissions and Presentation forms

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Proposals are welcome for the following presentation forms. All forms require in-person attendance.

Complete Session: Proposals for complete sessions should list the organizer or moderator and possible participants. The session organizer will be responsible for securing both session participants and a chair.

This is designed for sessions which could be described as:

Discussion: a session where a specific topic is discussed, normally with a panel, discussants and a chair

Plenary: a session to be attended by all participants

Birds of a Feather: informal gatherings of like-minded individuals who wish to discuss a certain topic without a pre-planned agenda

Lightning Talks: a storytelling format in which a presenter shows 20 slides for 20 seconds of commentary each.

The submission should provide titles, author names, and a brief description for each of the individual presentations. Submission: abstract (500 words maximum).

Regular Presentation: The presentation will be approx. 20 minutes long, plus 10 minutes for questions at the end. Submission: abstract (200 words maximum).

Short Presentation: The presentations will be approx. 10 minutes long, plus 5 minutes for questions at the end. Submission: abstract (200 words maximum)

Poster: An A1 poster

Posters are to be presented in-person. Submission: abstract (200 words maximum).

Tutorial or Workshop: Half-day or full-day tutorials (introductions) or workshops (more advanced special topics) with respectively 2 and 4 blocks each lasting 90 minutes in length.

These are scheduled to take place on Monday, December 2, 2024.

The abstract should describe the topic, the perspective (business or technical), the intended audience and possible prerequisites.

Hands-on exercises could rely on the participants using laptop computers. Submission: abstract (300 words maximum).

Side Meetings: Half-day or full day meetings for established DDI related projects or DDI Alliance working groups etc. These are scheduled to take place on Thursday, December 5 and/or Friday, December 6, 2024. Proposals should be aware that space is limited, so the number of participants should not exceed 10 people. Meeting space is being provided by SII. It will not be possible to provide catering for the side meetings.

The abstract should describe the topic and the rationale for the meeting.

Submission: abstract (300 words maximum).

Important dates

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Deadline of Call for Proposals due: 2 September 2024, 23:59 CEST.

Notification of acceptance for all proposals: 26 September 2024.

General Information

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The Program Committee strategically develops, creates and organizes the program. The Organization Committee coordinates the onsite work.

For questions or any other correspondence regarding the Call for Proposals, please send an email to eddi24-prog@googlegroups.com.

More information about the EDDI conference series and details on the previous EDDI conferences can be found at the EDDI website [https://www.eddi-conferences.eu].

Jon Johnson & Mari Kleemola

EDDI 2024 co-chairs

The DDI Alliance welcomes the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (Dr. Barry Radler, member representative) as an Associate Member!

The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) "is a long-term study of a random sample of 10,317 men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957 and of their randomly selected brothers and sisters....WLS can provide early indications of trends and problems that will become important as this larger group passes through its 60s. This is in addition to the value of the WLS in obtaining basic information about the life course as such, independent of the cohort’s vanguard position with respect to the baby boom. Also, the WLS is the first of the large longitudinal studies of American adolescents, and thus it provides the first large-scale opportunity to study the life course from late adolescence through the early/mid-60s, in the context of a complete record of ability, aspiration, and achievement." (WLS Overview)