Generating content for CLOSER Discovery

CLOSER brings together eight world-leading UK longitudinal studies to maximize their use, value and impact. A major output has been CLOSER Discovery, which allows users to search and browse questionnaire and dataset metadata. The efficient data management of complex longitudinal studies is both desirable and increasingly essential. Metadata standards are critical for maintaining this information through the data lifecycle. Many long-term studies face a historical backlog that has prevented them from moving to the best metadata standards. The CLOSER project has received significant funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and Medical Research Council for these eight studies, which provide the basis for a sustainable high-quality research resource.

CLOSER has developed a suite of tools and software using both in-house and commercially available solutions that begin to tackle some of the obstacles involved in documenting and using longitudinal metadata. The presentation will report on the successes and problems faced in using the DDI Lifecycle metadata standard to achieve these ambitions. This will be delivered as three presentations on:

• questionnaire metadata capture and annotation
• the mapping of questions, variables, keywords and concepts
• a demonstration of the latest functionality available for the research community