5.2 WP5 Technical report_ Schema for Systematic Management of Survey Data

In social science research, surveys are undertaken to collect information regarding specific social phenomenon (Mogalakwe, 2006). Social science constructs have complex meanings and this makes it difficult to capture all the dimensions of a concept (Babbie, 2020). However, it is a complex and challenging task to handle survey data due to the volume of information and the complexity of relationships between different codes, questions, variables and other items. Previous researches have used well-designed database schema to provide a structured approach to managing social science research data, allowing the researchers efficiently query and analyse the data (George, Voorhis, & Lee, 1994).

In this paper, we propose a cross-referencing schema to manage survey data. The schema includes entities related to surveys. The schema stores information about each item in the survey, and also allows for the creation of cross-references between items, enabling researchers to analyse relationships between different items as well as managing a list of controlled vocabulary terms used to standardize the terms used in surveys.