Ideas for discussion topics for the DDI Alliance Meeting of the Scientific Community?

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Hilde Orten

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Apr 9, 2025, 5:00:01 AMApr 9
to Data Documentation Initiative Users Group, db...@essex.ac.uk, ddiscient...@umich.edu

Dear DDI Community,

 

The DDI Alliance Annual Meeting of the Scientific Community will take place virtually on Thursday May 22nd 2025 at (14:00 UTC), (15:00 BST), (16:00 CEST), (10:00 EDT).

As usual, the meeting will focus on reporting and discussion of the activities and accomplishments of the Scientific Board, the TC and the Working Groups of the DDI Alliance.

But we are also interested in your input on priorities moving forward.

 

Eg. Which activities specified in the Scientific Work Plan do you see as the most important? Are there activities you would be interested in engaging in? Other ideas you may have about the scientific and technical work of the Alliance? Please send us an email in advance of the meeting if you have ideas on any of those topics.

 

We are looking forward to hearing from you and to seeing you at the meeting.

 

Registration for the meeting can be found here: https://umich.zoom.us/meeting/register/Xr98WZU0Q5e2895eesy9TA#/registration

 

Best wishes Hilde Orten (hilde...@sikt.no) and Darren Bell (db...@essex.ac.uk)

for the DDI Alliance Scientific Board

 

Joachim Wackerow

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Apr 28, 2025, 6:58:23 AMApr 28
to Hilde Orten, Data Documentation Initiative Users Group, db...@essex.ac.uk, ddiscient...@umich.edu
Hi Hilde, hi Darren,

I would like to suggest DDI media type and DDI API as topics.

A media type (or content type or MIME type) is a two-part identifier for file formats and content formats (Wikipedia).

An API is an Application Programming Interface. This can be understood as an agreement between different software programs.

A DDI media type together with a web-based DDI API would be the basis for the use of DDI metadata of web repositories. This can be the foundation of a distributed DDI metadata network. DDI metadata providers would have a standardized way to provide the DDI resources. DDI users (humans and machines) would have a standardized way to request DDI metadata from repositories.

Goals could be:
  • Approval of a DDI media type by the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority)
  • Publication of a web-based DDI API by the DDI Alliance
There is currently a related discussion going on in the DDI Developers email list. The topics will be on the agenda of the upcoming DDI Developers in May.

A related issue is filed in the Technical Committee tracker: “Official recommendation for content type for DDI representations”.

I would also like to mention a related recent publication “State of DDI Cloud” in IASSIST Quarterly.

It would be great if these topics would get a higher priority in the DDI Alliance.

Cheers,
Achim
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Hilde Orten

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Apr 30, 2025, 4:31:39 AMApr 30
to Joachim Wackerow, Data Documentation Initiative Users Group, db...@essex.ac.uk, ddiscient...@umich.edu

Hi Achim,

 

Thank you very much for your ideas for discussion topics for the Annual Meeting of the Scientific Community.

 

Looking forward to the discussions at the meeting 😊

 

Best wishes,

 

Hilde

George Alter

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Apr 30, 2025, 10:39:27 AMApr 30
to Hilde Orten, Joachim Wackerow, Data Documentation Initiative Users Group, db...@essex.ac.uk, ddiscient...@umich.edu
Hi Hilde,

I would suggest a discussion of the integration of DDI with statistical packages, especially the open source languages R and Python.  I am very impressed with the IPUMS R package that uses a DDI file to load data.   This might fit with the API discussion that Achim suggested, because R and Python can access APIs.  Data science programs teach R and Python, and R is taught in some social science departments too.
Best,    

       George
---------------------------------------------------
George Alter
Research Professor Emeritus
Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan
Tel: 734-478-0783    


Hilde Orten

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Apr 30, 2025, 10:43:53 AMApr 30
to George Alter, Joachim Wackerow, Data Documentation Initiative Users Group, db...@essex.ac.uk, ddiscient...@umich.edu

Hi George,

 

Thank you very much for your input.

 

We have received a couple of ideas for discussion and will make a selection of topics prior to the meeting.

 

Best wishes,

 

Hilde

Johnson, Jon

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Apr 30, 2025, 11:15:42 AMApr 30
to Hilde Orten, George Alter, Joachim Wackerow, Data Documentation Initiative Users Group, Bell, Darren S, ddiscient...@umich.edu

Hi George

 

There was some work done by Achim & Larry on this in Dagstuhl a while back (I think there was actually a paper?)

 

Jon

 

From: 'Hilde Orten' via DDI Users <icpsr-d...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, 30 April 2025 at 15:46
To: George Alter <alt...@umich.edu>
Cc: Joachim Wackerow <joachim....@posteo.de>, Data Documentation Initiative Users Group <ddi-...@icpsr.umich.edu>, Bell, Darren S <db...@essex.ac.uk>, ddiscient...@umich.edu <ddiscient...@umich.edu>
Subject: SV: [DDI-users] Ideas for discussion topics for the DDI Alliance Meeting of the Scientific Community?

⚠ Caution: External sender

 

Hoyle, Larry

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Apr 30, 2025, 4:16:37 PMApr 30
to Johnson, Jon, Hilde Orten, George Alter, Joachim Wackerow, Data Documentation Initiative Users Group, Bell, Darren S, ddiscient...@umich.edu

Achim presented at Eddi 2018. The powerpoint is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/1808/27451

We also had a paper, but I don’t remember if it was submitted to EDDI. The model was the DDI4 model before the transition to DDI-CDI and the code has not been updated.

We read the model XMI in Python and generated an R package form that. We also had R code  to import DDI Codebook metadata into R objects.

The Python and R code are on Achim’s Git repository. I believe a copy of the paper is there too.

Achim has new ideas on using existing tools to generate object models in R and Python using the XML schema description of a model.

 

 

We also did a presentation at NADDI in 2019 in Ottawa.  The Powerpoint is attached.

 

I also experimented with generating a Python package. That got as far as importing the DDI-CDI model as Python objects, but not as far as making a workable package for the final DDI-CDI release for instances of metadata. Note that representing the model as objects (class, association, attribute) is different than generating classes for model elements (InstanceVariable, etc.)

I can share the Jupyter notebooks for that work if anyone is interested.

 

 

 

Larry

DDI4InR_NewPossibilities.pptx

Johnson, Jon

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Apr 30, 2025, 4:51:43 PMApr 30
to Larry Hoyle, Hilde Orten, George Alter, Joachim Wackerow, ddi-...@icpsr.umich.edu, Bell, Darren S, ddiscient...@umich.edu
Thanks, but I also remembered something about mapping between SPSS, Stata and SAS and DDI which preceded this? Or am I having a delusional moment?
Jon

On 30 Apr 2025, at 21:16, Hoyle, Larry <larry...@ku.edu> wrote:


<DDI4InR_NewPossibilities.pptx>

Wendy Thomas

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Apr 30, 2025, 5:55:57 PMApr 30
to Johnson, Jon, Larry Hoyle, Hilde Orten, George Alter, Joachim Wackerow, Data Documentation Initiative Users Group, Bell, Darren S, DDI Scientific Board
You're not delusional. There is/was mapping to/from set-up files for these. Tom Piazza had done some of this early on I think. Also we had an SPSS member at one time. 

Wendy L. Thomas                            
ISRDI [retired]

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/icpsr-ddi-users/7502129F-6E21-49FC-BC45-6BC64671F31A%40ucl.ac.uk.

Hoyle, Larry

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Apr 30, 2025, 7:19:51 PMApr 30
to Johnson, Jon, Hilde Orten, George Alter, Joachim Wackerow, ddi-...@icpsr.umich.edu, Bell, Darren S, ddiscient...@umich.edu

Yes. Achim and I presented several SAS conference papers on SAS and DDI before the R and Python work.  

https://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings/pdfs/sgf2008/137-2008.pdf

https://ipsr.unit.ku.edu/ksdata/sashttp/SGF2010/030-2010.pdf

https://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings/proceedings/sugi30/099-30.pdf

 

There are also  papers on using extended attributes in SAS and other platforms, which could be used to embed DDI metadata into SAS, SPSS or Stata datasets. All of these packages allow extended attributes (user defined name, value pairs attached to tables or variables).  This could be especially relevant for expressions of DDI in RDF.

https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/entities/publication/b7c21af9-42c7-4e46-be3c-3f9c03d17879

https://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings15/2481-2015.pdf

 

I also did something with integrating R and REDCap https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/entities/publication/00fd0a0e-7683-43f2-b0ec-0a91bd0e427b

 

There was a related presentation at NADDI 2013 by Phil Wright of ICPSR “Using SAS to generate DDI-Codebook

XML from Information Managed in Excel

Spreadsheets”

https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/entities/publication/2714664d-1e08-46b6-a72b-1b4c765eac52

Hoyle, Larry

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Apr 30, 2025, 7:31:30 PMApr 30
to George Alter, Hilde Orten, Joachim Wackerow, Data Documentation Initiative Users Group, db...@essex.ac.uk, ddiscient...@umich.edu

Darren haven’t you all at  UKDA done some work with DDI in Python?

 

From: icpsr-d...@googlegroups.com <icpsr-d...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of George Alter


Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2025 9:39 AM
To: Hilde Orten <hilde...@sikt.no>

Adrian Dusa

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May 1, 2025, 7:11:20 AMMay 1
to Hoyle, Larry, Johnson, Jon, Hilde Orten, George Alter, Joachim Wackerow, ddi-...@icpsr.umich.edu, Bell, Darren S, ddiscient...@umich.edu
I wonder if anyone is aware the R package DDIwR already covers these matters.
Especially the mapping between SPSS, SAS, Stata (and why not, even R) with DDI.

Converting SPSS or SAS extended missing values is done uniformly across all dataset variables, unlike all other (commercial) software that do this at variable level.

As far as I can tell, this solves the integration between DDI and the statistical packages, given that DDIwR can export to and from all of these.

Best wishes,
Adrian

Amber Leahey

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May 1, 2025, 7:34:00 PMMay 1
to Adrian Dusa, Hoyle, Larry, Johnson, Jon, Hilde Orten, George Alter, Joachim Wackerow, ddi-...@icpsr.umich.edu, Bell, Darren S, ddiscient...@umich.edu
Hi all, 

I'd also like to discuss the REDCAP - DDI workflows if possible, Larry nice to see this come up again! This was raised at the 2024 Dataverse community meeting in Texcoco MX by a Brazilian health data consortium and there is interest from others across the Dataverse community. 

I'd also like to share with you this study and article that was published that highlights the importance of metadata for restricted data discovery and access. The study maps metadata commonalities across sample source data to DDI Lifecycle, DDI Codebook, DATS, and DataCite. This study highlights a lack of standard metadata approaches to discovery and access for restricted access data in sources found and could be used to support funding opportunities or projects to standardize restricted access metadata in repositories including those involved in the GREI repositories initiative. It depicts DDI Lifecycle as the most comprehensive metadata standard for describing restricted access data for its extensive coverage of "access information" including request access procedures and requirements. 

Another thing that has been discussed over the past year or so, is the need for more DDI WG support for maintaining DDI metadata standards and/mappings in repositories, specifically the Dataverse repository community where API based import workflows and metadata export mappings have been externalized from the software and could use more community involvement in maintenance and review for future improvements and integrations. A Github repository of exportersincluding DDI-PDF which we contributed is now available and could be expanded to support updates to latest version of Codebook, and expanded to add new DDI products such as Lifecycle and CDI to the Dataverse community. 

 Thanks, looking forward to the meeting, 
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) 


Visit the Borealis website 

Test using the Borealis demo repository



Learn more about Scholars Portal 

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


From: icpsr-d...@googlegroups.com <icpsr-d...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Adrian Dusa <dusa....@unibuc.ro>
Sent: May 1, 2025 7:10 AM
To: Hoyle, Larry <larry...@ku.edu>
Cc: Johnson, Jon <jon.j...@ucl.ac.uk>; Hilde Orten <hilde...@sikt.no>; George Alter <alt...@umich.edu>; Joachim Wackerow <joachim....@posteo.de>; ddi-...@icpsr.umich.edu <ddi-...@icpsr.umich.edu>; Bell, Darren S <db...@essex.ac.uk>; ddiscient...@umich.edu <ddiscient...@umich.edu>
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