ICPSR-SRO Shared Data Model Project

Mary VardiganDirector, DDI Alliance

The Partners

• Both are units of the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan

• Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)– ICPSR is a large social science data archive

• Survey Research Operations (SRO)– SRO is a data collection center

Past Collaborations

• Worked together on the National Survey of Family Growth, sponsored by NCHS, to create an interactive codebook

• Partnered again on the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys, sponsored by NIMH– This involved a harmonization of three

datasets and interactive documentation featuring question comparison and five languages

Rationale for Collaboration

• Together, SRO and ICPSR cover the life cycle of research data

• We share a need for rich, high-quality metadata

• We want to comply with metadata standards – in particular, the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI)

• We need to pass data easily from SRO to ICPSR without information loss

New SRO-ICPSR Joint Project

• Shared data model and database design for survey metadata to enhance collaboration

• Challenges:– Different computing platforms– Different end products– Different staff orientations

Blaise Datamodel

(BMI)

SRO Blaise Parsing Tool

Blaise Database

(BDB)

SRORelational Database

(online/networked SQL Server)

SRORelational Database

(online/networked SQL Server)

Client Relational Database (offline SQL Server

Express)

Client Relational Database (offline SQL Server

Express)

<XML/WSDL>

DDI 2 or 3 File

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orm

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ion

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ICPSR Import Tool

User specifies files (location, file type, etc.) using an application

Other File Types (e.g. SAS, SPSS, etc)

ICPSR Relational Database

(online/networked Oracle)

ICPSR Relational Database

(online/networked Oracle)

SRO/ICPSR/Other web client

Tas

k B

Tas

k A

Tas

k B

an

d D

Tas

ks C

an

d D

Other Importing Tool

Client Relational Database (offline SQL Server

Express)

Client Relational Database (offline SQL Server

Express)

Export data

Export data

Display meta-data

Display meta-data

Stand-alone client application

Client application with sync data

Edit / Reviewmeta-data

Edit / Reviewmeta-data

Export ques-

tionnaire

Export ques-

tionnaire

Export code-book

Export code-book

Web server

ICPSR web client::• Variable Search

• Internal Variable Browser• NSFG Data Management

Products and Benefits

SRO• Tools to complement MQDS, which produces

XML documentation from Blaise instruments• Tool to permit external users to add

metadata for the National Survey of Family Growth

ICPSR• Variable-level database that permits users to

search across the ICPSR collection; compare variables; create new datasets and questionnaires

Other Benefits of the Project

• Should allow nearly seamless data sharing between SRO and ICPSR

• Covers survey data life cycle from data production to data publication

• Creates a competitive set of services that we can continue to market

• Ultimately brings more data to a wider audience

Project Phases

Phase 1• Design and development of the database

(April 30, 2008) • Modification of MQDS to export to and

read from the database (April 30, 2008)• Interface to allow remote user access for

NSFG (July 31, 2008)• ICPSR Social Science Variables Database

(Late 2008)

Preview of SSVD Search Results

Preview of Variable Display