The Question and Variable Database (QVDB) - A portal for the ESS

The Question Variable Database (QVDB) with the Colectica platform as technical backbone can be described as a system for storage and retrieval of questions and variables, and facilitating reuse of their metadata and metadata components. The overall aim of the QVDB is to serve the ESS, and potentially other survey programmes, in their business processes of specifying, documenting, versioning and disseminating survey data.

The European Social Survey (ESS) is an academically driven cross-national survey that has been conducted across Europe since its establishment in 2001. Every two years, face-to-face interviews are conducted with newly selected, cross-sectional samples.

In particular, this presentation describes how the QVDB was populated with 8 waves of ESS data including the transformation from DDI-C into DDI3.2 and it gives examples on how variables from different points in time or different datasets correspond to each other using the three levels structure of ConceptualVariable, RepresentedVariable and Variable (DDI3.2 variable harmonization)