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Working Paper Series

The DDI Working Paper Series (ISSN 2153-8247) is intended as a dynamic publication avenue for authors working in the DDI space. Currently, the series includes papers on new and emerging themes as well as papers on best practices and use case literature.

If you are interested in publishing a paper to be part of the DDI Working Paper Series, please contact us.

Best Practices

Management of DDI 3.0 Unique Identifiers

By Nikos Askitas, Arofan Gregory, and Maarten Hoogerwerf.

This best practice specifies the technical requirements and procedures for ensuring well-managed identifiers for both internal use and external references.

 

DDI 3.0 URNs and Entity Resolution

By Askitas, Nikos, Janet Eisenhauer, Arofan Gregory, Rob Grim, Pascal Heus, Maarten Hoogerwerf, and Wolfgang Zenk-Moltgen.

This document is a recommendation about appropriate architecture for the effective resolution of DDI URNs.

 

High-Level Architectural Model for DDI Applications

By Dinkelmann, Karl, Pascal Heus, Chuck Humphrey, Jeremy Iverson, Jannik Jensen, Sigbjorn Revheim, and Joachim Wackerow.
This best practices document looks at a possible architectural model to enable effective design of components that can be combined to create DDI applications.
 
 

Documenting a Wider Variety of Data Using the Data Documentation Initiative 3.1

By Block, William C., Christian Bilde Andersen, Daniel E. Bontempo, Arofan Gregory, Stan Howald, Douglas Kieweg, and Barry T. Radler.
This paper is intended to provide implementers and those delivering longitudinal data with recommendations on how to use DDI most effectively to support the presentation of longitudinal studies.
 
 

Enabling Longitudinal Data Comparison Using DDI

By Hansen, Sue Ellen, Jeremy Iverson, Uwe Jensen, Hilde Orten, and Johanna Vompras.
 
This paper looks at the growing variety of data sources in research -- e.g., biomarkers -- that are not traditional question-based surveys, and how these can be usefully documented.
 
 

Generic Longitudinal Business Process Model

By Barkow, Ingo, William Block, Jay Greenfield, Arofan Gregory, Marcel Hebing, Larry Hoyle, and Wolfgang Zenk-Moeltgen.
 
This paper looks at the unique characteristics of longitudinal data and offers recommendations for structuring metadata in a manner that facilitates analysis over time and metadata reuse.
 
 

Metadata for the Longitudinal Data Life Cycle

By Hoyle, Larry, Fortunato Castillo, Benjamin Clark, Neeraj Kashyap, Denise Perpich, Joachim Wackerow, and Knut Wenzig.
 
This paper proposes a reference model, the Generic Longitudinal Business Process Model (GLBPM), for the process of longitudinal data production and use, with an emphasis on the specification.
 
 

Implementation and Governance

By Edwards, Michelle, Jane Fry, Peter Granda, Kirstine Kolsrud, Stefan Kramer, Ken Miller, Ron Nakao, and Mary Vardigan.
 
This best practice covers the process of developing agreements and guidelines for implementation and governance of DDI as a metadata scheme for a community.
 
 

Presenting Longitudinal Studies to End Users Effectively Using DDI Metadata

By Kramer, Stefan, Randy Banks, Vicky Chang, Ingo Sieber, Mary Vardigan, and Wolfgang Zenk-Moeltgen.
 
This paper proposes best practice for the use of DDI to ensure that there are appropriate metadata to compare data produced across repeated data collection over time.
 
 

Work flows - Data Discovery and Dissemination: User Perspective

By Dinkelmann, Karl, Michelle Edwards, Jane Fry, Chuck Humphrey, Ron Nakao, and Wendy Thomas.
 
This best practice escribes the best practices for metadata producers to provide end users with the resources for data discovery and dissemination.
 
 

Work flows - Archival Ingest and Metadata Enhancement

By Dinkelmann, Karl, Michelle Edwards, Jane Fry, Chuck Humphrey, Kirstine Kolsrud, Stefan Kramer, Jenny Linnerud, Hans Jorgen Marker, Meinhard Moschner, Ron Nakao, Wendy Thomas, Achim Wackerow, and Wolfgang Zenk- Moeltgen.
 
This Best Practice discusses workflows for DDI usage in the context of archival ingest and metadata enhancement, beginning at the point of the handoff between the data provider and the archive.
 
 

Work flows for Metadata Creation Regarding Recoding, Aggregation and Other Data Processing Activities

By Marker, Hans Jorgen, Wolfgang Zenk-Moeltgen, Wendy Thomas, and Achim Wackerow.
 
This best practice discusses the capturing, in DDI metadata, of the processes of data aggregation, recoding and data processing.
 
 

Controlled Vocabularies

By Granda, Peter, Stefan Kramer, Jenny Linnerud, Hans Jorgen Marker, Ken Miller, and Mary Vardigan.
 
The benefits of using controlled vocabularies, which offer consistency, precision, and interoperability, within DDI metadata creation are the primary underlying principles behind this best practice.
 
 

Creating a DDI Profile

By Ionescu, Sanda.
 
This document outlines recommended best practices for creating a local DDI 3.0 Profile, which is a subset of DDI 3.0 fields to be used by an organization or shared by a community of users.
 
 

DDI 3.0 Schemes

By Linnerud, Jenny, Hans Jorgen Marker, Meinhard Moschner, and Wendy Thomas.
 
This best practice covers DDI publishing structures that promote reuse of common material by removing certain metadata content from the context of a specific study and publishing it for wider use.
 
 

Versioning and Publication

By Edwards, Michelle, Janet Eisenhauer, Jane Fry, Pascal Heus, Kirstine Kolsrud, Meinhard Moschner, Ron Nakao, and Wendy Thomas.
 
This best practice is designed to provide some guidelines to metadata creators and publishers about how to version metadata and publish it for others to use to comply with requirements for machine-
 
 

DDI as Content for Registries

By Askitas, Nikos, Peter Granda, Arofan Gregory, Rob Grim, Pascal Heus, Maarten Hoogerwerf, Jeremy Iverson, Ken Miller, Sigbjorn Revheim, and Jannik Vestergaard Jensen.
 
This document defines registries and provides a justification for using them.
 
 

Use Cases

An Archive's Perspective on DDI 3

By Kleemola, Mari, Michelle Edwards, Sanda Ionescu, Uwe Jensen, Olof Olsson, Ornulf Risnes, and Wendy Thomas.
 
This paper describes the DDI 3 evaluation process at the Finnish Social Science Data Archive (FSD), and the issues that came up during this work, including how to address multilinguality and metadata reuse.
 
 

Questasy: Documenting and Disseminating Longitudinal Data Online Using DDI 3

By Amin, Alerk, Michelle Edwards, Oliver Hopt, Jannik Jensen, Dan Kristiansen, Olof Olsson, and Joachim Wackerow.
 
This paper describes how Questasy, a Web application developed to manage the dissemination of data and metadata for panel surveys, was designed and implemented.
 
 

Building a Modular DDI 3 Editor

By Jensen, Jannik, Dan Kristiansen, Alerk Amin, Arofan Gregory, Agostina Martinez, Martin Mechtel, Mary Vardigan, and Wolfgang Zenk-Moeltgen.
 
This paper focuses on the creation of an open source DDI 3 editor built using a layered architecture at the Danish Data Archive (DDA).
 
 

Using DDI 3 for Comparison

By Ionescu, Sanda, Larry Hoyle, Mari Kleemola, Martin Mechtel, Olof Olsson, and Wendy Thomas.
 
This paper explores how archives can use DDI 3 to support and document data comparison and harmonization.
 
 

Extracting Metadata From the Data Analysis Workflow

By Hoyle, Larry, Joachim Wackerow, and Oliver Hopt.
 
This paper is an exploration of what metadata can be harvested from several commonly used programs, and therefore by deduction what else is not available from these programs.
 
 

Questionnaire Management and DDI: The QDDS Case

By Hopt, Oliver, Alerk Amin, Arofan Gregory, Jannik Jensen, Dan Kristiansen, and Mary Vardigan.
 
This paper describes the Questionnaire Development Documentation project, a system created by GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences to permit permanent electronic documentation of questionnaire development and the final state of the instrument.
 
 

Grouping of Survey Series Using DDI 3

By Jensen, Uwe, Sanda Ionescu, Mari Kleemola, Agostina Martinez, Wendy Thomas, Mary Vardigan, and Wolfgang Zenk-Moeltgen.
 
This paper is an exploration and evaluation of DDI 3 to determine its suitability for marking up and managing cross-national comparative surveys like the International Social Survey Programme data.
 
 

Semantic Web

Scenarios for the DDI-RDF Discovery Vocabulary

By Vompras, Johanna, Arofan Gregory, Thomas Bosch, Joachim Wackerow. 2015
 
In this paper, the authors introduce representative real world scenarios that show (1) the usage and importance of the DDI-RDF Discovery Vocabulary for the social, behavioural, and economic sciences and the Linked Data community and (2) the interaction between Disco and other vocabularies. These scenarios have in common that they represent real information needs of researchers. The Disco specification itself contains example data which can be consulted to get details of how to construct Disco instance data and to get a feeling of the full potential of Disco to represent metadata on statistical data.
 
 

Using RDF to Describe and Link Social Science Data to Related Resources on the Web: Leveraging the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) Model

By Kramer, Stefan, Amber Leahey, Humphrey Southall, Johanna Vompras, and Joachim Wackerow.
 
This paper looks at leveraging DDI to enable semantic linking of social science data to other data and related resources on the Web and is organized into five use cases: (1) Linking related publications; (2) Linking people and organizations; (3) Linking geography; (4) Linking related studies; (5) Linking to licenses.
 
 

Other

Exploring the Relationship Between DDI, SDMX and the Generic Statistical Business Process Model

By Vale, Steven. 2010
 
This paper, presented at the Second Annual European DDI Users Group Meeting in Utrecht, Netherlands, in December 2010, investigates the similarities and degree of overlap among the DDI, SDMX, and GSBPM standards.
 
 

How Do We Manage Complex Questions in the Context of the Large-Scale Ingest of Legacy Paper Questionnaires into DDI Lifecycle?

By Gierl, Claude and Johnson, Jon. 2014
 
 

Encoding Provenance of Social Science Data: Integrating PROV with DDI

By Carl Lagoze, Jeremy Williams, Lars Vilhuber, William Block. 2013
 
 

Using Extended Attributes in Data Analysis Software- Controlled Vocabularies, Tools and DDI

By Larry Hoyle . 2013
 
 

Representing and Utilizing DDI in Relational Databases

By Amin, Alerk, Ingo Barkow, Stefan Kramer, David Schiller, and Jeremy Williams.
 
This paper, which resulted from a workship hosted by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Research and Educational Information (DIPF) and held in Frankfurt, Germany, on April 7-8, 2011, explores the use of relational databases to represent DDI XML.
 
 

Communicating in Time and Space: How to Overcome Incompatible Frames of Reference of Producers and Users of Archival Data

By Sundgren, Bo.
 
This paper, written by Professor Bo Sundgren of Stockholm University, was the basis of the Keynote Address at the European DDI Users Group Meeting (EDDI) held December 5-6, 2011, at the Swedish National Data Service (SND) in Gothenburg, Sweden.
 
 

Developing a Model-Driven DDI Specification

This paper, an outcome of a 2012 Dagstuhl seminar on "DDI Moving Forward," captures the decisions and deliberations of the seminar participants on the approach to creating a new model-based standard.
 
 

A Qualitative Data Model for DDI

By Hoyle, Larry, Louise Corti, Arofan Gregory, Agustina Martinez, Joachim Wackerow, Eirik Alvar, Noemi Betancort Cabrera, Damien Gallagher, Tobias Gebel, Jani Hautamaki, Arja Kuula, Steve McEachern, and Cornelia Zuell.
 
This paper, informed by key qualitative data use cases, presents a model describing qualitative data.
 
 

DDI-CDI and Other Standards (DDI Working Paper Series, No. 35)

By the DDI-CDI Working Group (2025).
 
This paper explores how DDI-Cross Domain Integration (DDI-CDI) interacts with other standards to enable cross-domain data interoperability, emphasizing the need for multiple standards to address different aspects of data integration. It argues that DDI-CDI should be used alongside additional standards to enhance data and semantic interoperability across domains.