Any studies about what DDI fields are used ?

[Amber Leahey]

Hi everyone, 

I'm helping to write some background information about DDI for our national funders and RDM network of experts as part of a disciplinary metadata study into Canadian repositories. 

Can anyone tell me if there is research and analysis available publicly for me to read/look at , about what DDI fields are most used across DDI providers? For example is there any research or analysis into the contents of DDI published,  for understanding adoption/use of certain fields by frequency perhaps? It will be difficult to make generalizations as every dataset may be different but maybe a sample analysis?

We are trying to map the landscape for disciplinary metadata discovery, access, and adoption across Canadian repositories and data publishers. DDI is just one standard being profiled. 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions:))

Happy New Year! 

Best, 

Amber Leahey 

Service Director, Borealis, The Canadian Dataverse Repository / Le dépôt Dataverse canadien 
Data & GIS Librarian, Scholars Portal, Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) 

amber....@utoronto.ca 

Visit the Borealis website 

Test using the Borealis demo repository

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[A. G.]

Amber:

This may not be very helpful, but the most common set of DDI fields for DDI Codebook is the set employed by the ISHN Metadata Publisher. If you go here, section 7 lists out the recommended fields:

http://guide-for-data-archivists.readthedocs.io/en/latest/completeMetadata.html

Another similar (and very common) source is the CESSDA profile: https://zenodo.org/records/4050124

I know Knut Wenzig did some analysis of who was using DDI and which versions (see EDDI 2024 - he gave a presentation) but I am not sure if he looked at specific metadata fields.

These are not real analyses, but they will at least give you some indication.

Cheers,

Arofan

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[Wenzig, Knut]

Hi Amber,

Arofan is right, there is research done by Xiaoyao and me: 

Wenzig, K., & Han, X. (2024). State of the DDI Cloud. IASSIST Quarterly, 48(4). https://doi.org/10.29173/iq1116

We provided there also a dataset where you can do your own research, if you want to know more about specific elements  of DDI-Codebook.

Since then publication  of DDI  metadata increased dramatically and we will perhaps update our research at some point in time.

Best

knut.

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Von: 'A. G.' via DDI Users <icpsr-d...@googlegroups.com>
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An: DDI Users Group ICPSR <ddi-...@icpsr.umich.edu>; Amber Leahey <amber....@utoronto.ca>
Betreff: Re: [DDI-users] Any studies about what DDI fields are used ?

 

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[Amber Leahey]

This is perfect, thank you!

Btw Dataverse maps only the .tab derivative from deposit to File section in DDI export, rest of the files goes to 'Other materials'  , see example in Borealis (Odesi collections).

"From  the  252  different DDI Codebook  2.5  elements 119 elements were used in  our  sample"

Table 4: Usage Statistics 

This is great 🙂

Thanks! 

Amber Leahey 

Service Director, Borealis, The Canadian Dataverse Repository / Le dépôt Dataverse canadien 
Data & GIS Librarian, Scholars Portal, Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) 

amber....@utoronto.ca 

Visit the Borealis website 

Test using the Borealis demo repository

Odesi support: od...@scholarsportal.info 

Scholars GeoPortal support: geop...@scholarsportal.info 

Learn more about Scholars Portal 

For general Scholars Portal support: he...@scholarsportal.info 

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Sent: January 16, 2026 1:03 PM
To: DDI Users Group ICPSR <ddi-...@icpsr.umich.edu>
Subject: AW: [DDI-users] Any studies about what DDI fields are used ?

 

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[Wendy Thomas]

Amber,

Also be aware that NESSTAR didn’t support all of DDI-Codebook, in fact they used a pre-publication version and limited some of the cardinalities, etc. As most organizations used NESSTAR this limited the elements that they were aware of. 

I'll see if I have a sample of the profile we used in building NHGIS which used nCubes in defining aggregate data tables.

Wendy

Wendy L. Thomas                            

ISRDI [retired]

email: w...@umn.edu

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