[DDI-ADG] Minutes from today's meeting

[Mary Vardigan]

Some very brief minutes...

July 5, 2005

Present: San Cannon, J Gager, Fred Gey, Sanda Ionescu, Mary Vardigan

We discussed J's recent proposal for the elements in the Geographic 
Coverage reusable class. The structure he created would allow for 
geographic level indicators (e.g., country, state, county, etc.) and also 
specific values (e.g., United States, Michigan, Washtenaw County) plus 
their associated codes in a geographic classification system (ISO, FIPS, 
NUTS, etc.).

The structure also has the capability to point to a geographic variable; 
one may use this variable reference alone, list out all the geographic 
values, or do both. It was pointed out that listing the values, even if it 
seems redundant, may be useful for search purposes.

Since this geographic structure is a reusable class, we need to bear in 
mind how it would be used in modules other than what we have commonly 
called the study description.

In terms of the hierarchy of geographic levels, J will discuss with the SRG 
whether the geographic coverage syntax should be recursive, using the 
nesting feature, or whether the hierarchy should be indicated through 
IDREFS with each geographic value having an ID.

For the next meeting (July 12), Sanda will "mark up" the sample geography 
from Use Case #1 (the Voter Registration study) using J's structure.

Mary Vardigan
Director, Collection Delivery
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
University of Michigan
P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248
Phone: 734-615-7908
Fax: 734-647-8200
www.icpsr.umich.edu