Experimenting with DDI-L at the French Center of Socio-Political Data (CDSP)

The French Center of Socio-Political Data has presented its reflection on the process of shifting from DDI-C to DDI-L at EDDI14. This year, we will discuss the creation and storage of a DDI-L compliant XML record by capturing metadata of a nine-wave political study of the ELIPSS panel. Determining how best to recognise continuities between metadata collections within the same study, including question continuity and methodological continuities has been a primary challenge. To answer it, the starting point was the creation of a questions database. As seen at the 2014 DDI workshop in Dagstuhl, the minimum requirements that a metadata system should meet before being able to import/export DDI-L are uniqueness of items, versioning and granularity. To conceive such a database, we had to start by using simple tools. We first identified metadata in CSV files that include variable-level information. We then performed a semi-manual import from these files to the database using importing scripts. Once we removed automatically the redundancy, with a further stage of human control, we generated the structure of the DDI-L compliant xml file. Our paper will present this process and discuss its replication to other DDI-C documented studies