Transcript ICPSR-SRO Shared Data Model Project Mary Vardigan Director, DDI Alliance The Partners • Both are units of the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan •

ICPSR-SRO Shared
Data Model Project
Mary Vardigan
Director, DDI Alliance
The Partners
• Both are units of the Institute for Social
Research, University of Michigan
• Inter-university Consortium for Political
and Social Research (ICPSR)
– ICPSR is a large social science data
archive
• Survey Research Operations (SRO)
– SRO is a data collection center
Past Collaborations
• Worked together on the National Survey
of Family Growth, sponsored by NCHS, to
create an interactive codebook
• Partnered again on the Collaborative
Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys,
sponsored by NIMH
– This involved a harmonization of three
datasets and interactive documentation
featuring question comparison and five
languages
Rationale for Collaboration
• Together, SRO and ICPSR cover the life
cycle of research data
• We share a need for rich, high-quality
metadata
• We want to comply with metadata
standards – in particular, the Data
Documentation Initiative (DDI)
• We need to pass data easily from SRO to
ICPSR without information loss
New SRO-ICPSR Joint Project
• Shared data model and database design
for survey metadata to enhance
collaboration
• Challenges:
– Different computing platforms
– Different end products
– Different staff orientations
Task B and D
Other File Types
(e.g. SAS, SPSS, etc)
DDI 2 or 3
File
Task B
Blaise
Database
(BDB)
Client
Relational Database
(offline SQL Server
Express)
Client
Relational Database
(offline SQL Server
Express)
Other Importing Tool
SRO
Relational Database
(online/networked SQL Server)
Edit /
Review
metadata
Stand-alone
client
application
ICPSR Import Tool
Export
codebook
ICPSR
Relational Database
(online/networked Oracle)
Export
questionnaire
Export
data
Display
metadata
<XML/WSDL>
Client
application
with sync
data
SRO/ICPSR/Other
web client
Web server
Task A
SRO Blaise Parsing Tool
Tasks C and D
<Metadata &
Data>
<Transform-ations>
<Data
Storage>
Blaise
Datamodel
(BMI)
<Application
Logic>
Offline\Local Application
Online or
Offline
User specifies files (location, file type, etc.) using
an application
ICPSR web client::
• Variable Search
• Internal Variable Browser
• NSFG Data Management
Products and Benefits
SRO
• Tools to complement MQDS, which produces
XML documentation from Blaise instruments
• Tool to permit external users to add
metadata for the National Survey of Family
Growth
ICPSR
• Variable-level database that permits users to
search across the ICPSR collection; compare
variables; create new datasets and
questionnaires
Other Benefits of the Project
• Should allow nearly seamless data
sharing between SRO and ICPSR
• Covers survey data life cycle from data
production to data publication
• Creates a competitive set of services that
we can continue to market
• Ultimately brings more data to a wider
audience
Project Phases
Phase 1
• Design and development of the database
(April 30, 2008)
• Modification of MQDS to export to and
read from the database (April 30, 2008)
• Interface to allow remote user access for
NSFG (July 31, 2008)
• ICPSR Social Science Variables Database
(Late 2008)
Preview of SSVD Search Results
Preview of Variable Display