DDI (Data Documentation Initiative)

A widely used, international standard for describing data from the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. Two versions of the standard are currently maintained in parallel:

• DDI Codebook (or DDI version 2) is the simpler of the two, and intended for documenting simple survey data for exchange or archiving. Version 2.5 was released in January 2012.
• DDI Lifecycle (or DDI version 3) is richer and may be used to document datasets at each stage of their lifecycle from conceptualization through to publication and reuse. It is modular and extensible. Version 3.2 was published in March 2014.

Both versions are XML-based and defined using XML Schemas. They were developed and are maintained by the DDI Alliance.

Documentation

• View specification
• Visit website

Responsible organizations

• Maintainer: DDI Alliance
  • View website

  Identifiers

  Internal MSC ID msc:m13

  Version history

  version 3.2 (current) – DDI Lifecycle

  version 2.5 (current) – DDI Codebook

  version 3.1 (deprecated on 2014-03-12) – DDI Lifecycle

  version 2.1 (deprecated on 2014-01-29) – DDI Codebook

  Relationships to other metadata standards

  • CESSDA MLI - Council of European Social Science Data Archives Minimum Level of Information is a profile of this scheme.
  • GSIM (Generic Statistical Information Model) is a profile of this scheme.
  • This scheme can be mapped to Dublin Core.

  This document identifies which elements in the DDI v2.x Codebook DTD correspond to the 15 Dublin Core elements, and maps between them.

  This document provides a mapping from UK AGMAP and ISO 19115 to DDI v2.x Codebook.

  An appendix to the documentation of the DataCite Metadata Schema v2.x maps elements in the DataCite schema to corresponding elements in the DDI v3.1 set of schemas.

  Tools

  The Data Documentaion Initiative website's list of tools to implement the DDI standard. DdiEditor is a DDI-Lifecycle Editing Framework developed by the DDA - Danish Data Archive.

  Server-side software for building a data portal, with a particular focus on survey datasets. It uses DDI to provide access to the data at the level of concepts and variables. For an example of it in use, see the SOEPinfo data portal.

  The Geodoc metadata editor tool allows users to create, validate, edit and export geospatial metadata records. It also supports the creation and export of metadata records as XML output files compliant with a number of standards, including UK AGMAP 2.1, ISO 19115, FGDC, DDI, and Dublin Core.

  A tool to enable the automated transfer of statistical data between programs. The software supports version 3.1 of the specification and will read and write XML schemas and associated delimited data files.

  Known users

  Provides a seamless interface to datasets from social science data archives across Europe using the CESSDA MLI profile of DDI.

  The Data Documentation Initiative website's list of projects adopting or encouraging DDI as a standard.

  Links to DDI 3 use case papers, which were the outcomes of a workshop held at the Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics in Wadern, Germany, November 2-6, 2009.

  A data archive providing leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community; all metadata conforms to the DDI standard.

  Provides members of the scholarly community with access to files associated with scholarly studies for the purpose of replication, for all studies conducted by ISPS-affiliated researchers. ISPS metadata records conform to DDI requirements and include a minimal set of Dublin Core metadata elements.

  Curator of the largest collection of digital data in the social sciences and humanities in the United Kingdom, the archive uses DDI as the basis for its catalogue records.