Recent Improvements in Data Documentation and Online Data Browsing in the GGP

In the context of international and longitudinal surveys, like the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), metadata are important to document comparability across countries and waves. In the past round of GGP data collection, data documentation was compliant to the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) standard, and it was prepared and disseminated online through the software Nesstar. Metadata provided detailed information on national fieldwork methodologies and on country deviations from the GGP standard questionnaire. However, the work was time demanding because only partially automatized. Additionally Nesstar is no longer maintained by its developers. This paper presents improvements undertaken in data documentation in the new round of GGP data collection. Nesstar was replaced with Colectica, a software already used by other international or longitudinal projects (see for example the UK longitudinal studies portal called CLOSER Discovery at https://discovery.closer.ac.uk/). There is a twofold interest in implementing Colectica. First, it is compatible with Blaise, the computer-assisted interviewing software used in most countries fielding GGP. Colectica automatically generates a DDI codebook from the Blaise output file, thus reducing much the manual work needed to document variable metadata and improving the accuracy of the information provided. This, together with automatized processes to identify country deviations from the GGP standard questionnaire, allows a considerable gain in efficiency. Second, Colectica is compliant to a version of DDI, called DDI-Lifecycle, specifically suited for documenting conceptual and methodological issues of comparability across countries and waves. Additionally, it is possible through the Colectica online portal to perform cross-country comparisons of variable metadata and variable tabulations over time. The paper describes the new GGP data documentation procedure and the functionalities of the new online GGP data-browsing portal