1 |  P a g e Metadata Creation, Transformation and Discovery for Social Science Data Management: The DAMES Project Infrastructure

This paper discusses the use of metadata, underpinned by DDI (Data Documentation Initiative), to support social science data management. This term refers broadly to the discovery, preparation and manipulation of social science data for the purposes of research and analysis. Typical tasks include recoding variables within a dataset, and linking data from different sources. A description is given of the DAMES project (Data Management through e-Social Science), a UK project which is building resources and services to support quantitative social science data management activities. DAMES provides generic facilities for performing (and recording) operations on data. Specific resources include support for analysis through micro-simulation, and support for access to specialist data on occupations, educational qualifications, measures of ethnicity and immigration, social care, and mental health. The DAMES project tools and services can generate, use, transform and search metadata that describes social science datasets (such as micro-social survey datasets and aggregate-level macro-data). On DAMES, this metadata is described by various standards including DD