Webinar: The DDI Variable Cascade

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Webinar: The DDI Variable...

The first webinar in the 2023 CODATA – DDI Alliance webinar series, ‘The DDI Variable Cascade: Describing Data to Optimize Reusability and Comparison’, took place on 9 March 2023.

In the social, behavioural, and economic sciences, data is often described as sets of ‘variables’ – essentially the columns in a table or the answers, respondent-by-respondent, to a question in a survey. The term ‘variable’ is employed by researchers and data managers to describe a range of specific uses of this granular concept, often in ways that lack sufficient clarity to support automation.

The DDI variable cascade is a more nuanced model which describes the stages of a variable from conception to its use in a data set. Drawing on other conceptual standards such as the Generic Statistical Information Model (GSIM), DDI provides an implementation mechanism for the increasingly common granular management and reuse of data. In this webinar, the model behind the variable cascade will be presented, along with the practical implementation of the various types.

Presenters are Arofan Gregory (consultant, DDI Alliance and CODATA), Hilde Orten (Sikt, the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research) and Kathryn Lavender (US National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging [NACDA]), with a welcome by Laura Molloy (CODATA).