Improving metadata quality of the European Social Survey using DDI

The first edition of round 9 data and documentation from the European Social Survey (ESS) will be released in October 2019. The metadata is in great part produced with DDI based tools. The data is published both in DDI-Codebook (NESSTAR) and DDI-Lifecycle (QVDB/Colectica) making the datasets more accessible for researchers and facilitating meaningful interpretation and use.

In particular, this presentation describes how DDI is used in the production of ESS9 data and documentation. This includes practical examples like the production of ESS Codebooks and Data Setup files based on DDI3.2 XML and it illustrates how metadata components like variables and codelists are reused over time (ESS1 to ESS9).