[DDI-SRG] FW: [DDI-users] DDI usage scenario

[Mary Vardigan]

Dear TIC,

I was wondering if someone could take a look at this and get back to the
senders. Not knowing as much as you all do, I had a couple of questions:

* Is Universe mandatory? It seems not to make sense in this context.
* Do the variable references presume that there is a DDI 3.0 file with
the full variable information somewhere else? What if that is not the
case? Can the text of the variable (question, variable label, and
category labels) be put into this instance? 

This is an interesting use of DDI 3.0. Let me know what you think.

Thanks much,
Mary

-----Original Message-----
From: ddi-users-bounces at icpsr.umich.edu
[mailto:ddi-users-bounces at icpsr.umich.edu] On Behalf Of Alerk Amin
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 11:49 AM
To: ddi-users at icpsr.umich.edu
Cc: Rob Grim
Subject: [DDI-users] DDI usage scenario

Hello,

We are are currently trying to use DDI 3 as the output for a
documentation tool that we are working on. Our needs do not fall into
the normal "lifecycle" model, and we are running into some issues. We
would appreciate any help or insight about how we can use DDI with our
project.

First, a short description of our project. We are building a website
that allows researchers to document their publications and the concepts
that they use in the publication. A example of a concept in a article
would be 'household income' referenced by a variable in the dataset that
contains the actual household data values. Another example would be
'active social participation', measured through a group of variables.

In our project we use a datasets that reside in data archives and for
which pre DDI 3.0 documentation is available through Nesstar. 
Researchers typically only use a selection of variables from a dataset
in their publications. We want to capture and reference only the
variables that the researcher used and the concepts that - as the
example shows - can be tied to one or more variables.


Using our website, researchers can create concepts that they are
studying in their publication, and then select the variables they used
to measure that concept. We want to create a DDI instance for each
publication that captures the additional metadata for that publication. 
In this case, that would be the list of concepts and the list of
variables for each concept (in case a concept is represented by more
than one variable). The concepts are "new" information, but the
variables should link back to the original XML for the dataset.

The attached sample.xml file contains a small example showing how we
think this information should be captured with DDI for one publication.
Does this seem like an appropriate solution? Or should we use a
different method for placing this information inside DDI XML?  We would
appreciate any comments or suggestions. Thank you for your help.

Best,
Alerk, Rob

--
Alerk Amin
Senior Software Developer
CentERdata
Room K737 (Tilburg University, Koopmans Building) Postal address : PO
Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands Visiting address :
Warandelaan 2, 5037 AB Tilburg, The Netherlands Telephone : +31-13-466
2243 / 8325 Fax : +31-13-466 2764 WWW : www.centerdata.nl Disclaimer :
See http://www.centerdata.nl/maildisclaimer.
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