Harmonization of traumatic stress research data

Presentation as part of Panel on "Metadata Provider Perspectives on Longitudinal Data Harmonization" Panel abstract: Data harmonization allows data collected by different studies or at different time periods to be more similar and comparable. Whether this is done retrospectively or prospectively the data for a particular harmonization will often be constrained by the specifics of the research question. Data providers, or metadata providers have a wider role in assisting a large number of potential users of the data, to discover data items which are or could potentially be comparable in a range of unspecified scenarios. Such an undertaking requires a shift in perspective from “harmonized data” to “harmonizable data” and constructing a generic framework to enable that to be carried out in a sustainable and scalable way. The panel discussion will bring together the experiences of a number of data and metadata providers and a software provider currently working to create such discoverable resources. Collectively the panel will be able to speak to a range of social science domains, political science, mental health, aging studies and multi-purpose cohort studies on how these challenges can be addressed using the DDI-Lifecycle metadata standard