CLOSER’s Data Management Network provides a forum for knowledge sharing, training and discussion related to the practical implementation of the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and metadata standards. The ‘Metadata management in the real world’ webinar series showcases invited guest speakers utilising these standards with real world applications.
Videos and slides from previous webinars can be found below.
Previous 'Metadata management in the real world' webinars
In summer 2024, we added a new standardised scales section to our Discovery research tool for UK longitudinal population studies.
This exciting update means it is now much easier to determine if questions from 11 CLOSER studies’ questionnaires belong to a standardised scale and identify where these scales are used across the studies and waves of data collection.
In this webinar, our data discoverability team explored this new functionality, showcasing how you can now easily identify which scales are included and download study data with the confidence that it includes valid measures of the concepts you’re investigating.
We also demonstrated the different ways you can use lists in CLOSER Discovery to enhance your use of the research tool.
Using standardised scales in CLOSER Discovery – Claudia Alito
- Watch Claudia’s talk exploring standardised scales in CLOSER Discovery
- Download Claudia’s slides exploring standardised scales in CLOSER Discovery [PDF]
Creating lists in CLOSER Discovery – Dr Becky Oldroyd
Providing good quality documentation that is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) to help others use your data is being increasingly mandated by funders. However, there is still little guidance available on the tools that can help the sole researcher or a small research team do so.
This webinar introduced two tools – the NADA Metadata Editor and the DDIwR package – which can be easily implemented to both meet funder requirements and provide researchers with the rich metadata needed for using and sharing their data with confidence.
NADA Metadata Editor – Mehmood Asghar (World Bank)
- Watch Mehmood’s talk on the NADA Metadata Editor
- Download Mehmood’s slides on the NADA Metadata Editor
The DDIwR package – Adrian Dusa (University of Bucharest)
CLOSER Discovery is the UK’s most comprehensive research tool for longitudinal population studies.
This free-to-use resource allows you to explore the content of the multiple UK longitudinal population studies and has been recently redesigned based on user feedback.
In this webinar, CLOSER Metadata Manager, Dr Hayley Mills led an in-depth tour of CLOSER Discovery taking you through how to search, explore, and browse questionnaires and datasets.
The webinar covered an overview of the newly redesigned CLOSER Discovery website and a live demonstration of the key features of Discovery.
In 2022, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC) commissioned CLOSER to assess the state of data across UK longitudinal population studies (LPS) and provide insights into what is required to ensure the data is in an appropriate state to support broad data sharing. In addition, the project reviewed data linkage plans and activities across LPS and repeat cross-sectional surveys, such as the election studies.
The data audit provides a baseline of information to inform funders of the current state of the activities carried out by UK LPS, in preparation for Population Research UK to identify where gaps exist and where improvements may be possible to help plan for future data collection, and highlights the support required for the studies to achieve the funders’ ambitions.
The webinar introduced the CLOSER Data Audit report and provided a forum for feedback and discussion on its findings.
In this webinar, the CLOSER Discovery team (Jon Johnson, Jenny Li, William Norley, and Becky Oldroyd) showcased a selection of our current and in-development tools, which enable CLOSER and our partners to collaborate efficiently.
Managing questionnaire metadata using Archivist: Becky Oldroyd
Archivist is CLOSER’s open-source DDI questionnaire editor which allows us to add questionnaire metadata to CLOSER Discovery: the UK’s most detailed search platform for longitudinal population studies. In this presentation, Becky Oldroyd (CLOSER Metadata Officer), describes what Archivist is and why it was developed, along with highlighting some key features of Archivist that allow for the production of high-quality questionnaire metadata.
- Watch Becky’s talk on our YouTube channel
- Download the ‘Managing questionnaire metadata using Archivist’ presentation slides [PDF]
Work-flow Automation: Jenny Li
In this presentation, Jenny Li (CLOSER Metadata Developer), explores using continuous integration tools for quality assurance of workflows.
- Watch Jenny’s talk on our YouTube channel
- Download the ‘Work-flow Automation’ presentation slides [PDF]
Dashboard Tool: William Norley
In this presentation, William Norley (CLOSER Metadata Developer), discusses the Dashboard tool which enables CLOSER to manage and quality assure free text fields used in CLOSER Discovery before publication.
Extract2DDI: Jon Johnson
In this presentation, Jon Johnson (CLOSER Technical Lead) outlines a new tool under development at CLOSER to extract metadata from SPSS and Stata files into the DDI Codebook and DDI Lifecycle metadata standards.
Part of the ESRC’s Future Data Services programme is looking into how to fund data services beyond 2024. This webinar saw Richard Welpton (ESRC Head of Data Services) introduce the Future Data Services programme before delegates were given the opportunity to ask questions and contribute ideas on potential priorities for the ESRC.
Rich Data Services: Pascal Heus & Andrew DeCarlo (Metadata Technology)
The presentation focused on Rich Data Services (RDS), an innovative platform from Metadata Technology North America aiming to the delivery of data as a service. Features include: an industry standard REST based API, concurrent access to data and metadata, web-based applications for exploring, tabulating, or downloading the data, and much more. RDS aims to empowering information systems, reducing data wrangling, and overall modernising data publication and access. It broadly serves data producers, data scientists, traditional researchers, application developers, and casual users.
- Watch Pascal’s talk on our YouTube channel
- Download the ‘Rich Data Services’ presentation slides (PDF)
Smart Energy Research Laboratory – Darren Bell (UK Data Service)
This presentation focused on the Smart Energy Research Lab (SERL) a five-year consortium project between the UK Data Archive and University College London. The presentation described how they have approached storing cross-disciplinary data at scale using a variety of data models including wide column store and property graph on a Hadoop platform. During the talk, Darren considered some of the challenges in treating data at the data point level and how going forward, this can support a “domain agnostic” and truly interoperable approach to subsetting variable data and generating bespoke data products in real time form sources as diverse as IoT meter data and “traditional” social science surveys.
The Questionnaire Design and Documentation Tool (QDDT): a tool for developing questions and documenting the design process – Hilde Orten (NSD)
The presentation from NSD will focus how the QDDT can be used, to develop questions that are aimed to be fielded across the different countries, using examples from the ESS. Focus will be put on how QDDT can be used to create questions based on research concepts, and how the development of questions can be managed and documented. Ideas for how content from the QDDT in future may be used in a translation tool, and for documenting variables of the ESS international data set will also be shared.
An overview of the development and fielding of questionnaires using Colectica and DDI at CSO Ireland – Ciara Cummins (CSO-Ireland)
The presentation from CSO-Ireland will focus on how they have centralised the development of questions and the production of questionnaires using Colectica software to enable reusability, standardisation and to help improve the quality and processes across statistical outputs.