The Data Documentation Initiative (also known as DDI) is an international standard for describing surveys, questionnaires, statistical data files, and social sciences study-level information. This information is described as metadata by the standard.

Begun in 1995, the effort brings together data professionals from around the world to develop the standard. The DDI specification, most often expressed in XML, provides a format for content, exchange, and preservation of questionnaire and data file information. DDI supports the description, storage, and distribution of social science data, creating an international specification that is machine-actionable and web-friendly.

Version 2 (also called "Codebook") of the DDI standard has been implemented in the Dataverse data repository and the data archives of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. The latest version 3.3 (also called "Lifecycle") of the DDI standard was released in 2020.

Member Institutions

InstitutionAbbr.Country
Aristotle Cloud Services AustraliaACSAAustralia
Australian Bureau of StatisticsABSAustralia
Centro De Investigaciones SociológicasCISSpain
ColecticaColecticaUS
Cornell UniversityCISERUS
Danish Data ArchiveDDADenmark
Data Archiving and Networked ServicesDANSNetherlands
Finnish Social Science Data ArchiveFinland
German Socio-Economic Panel StudySOEPGermany
GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social SciencesGESISGermany
Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard UniversityIQSSUS
Institute for the Study of LaborIZAGermany
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social ResearchICPSRUS
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMITUS
Norwegian Social Science Data ServicesNSDNorway
Open Data Foundation
Princeton UniversityUS
Research Data Centre of the German Federal Employment Agency, Institute for Employment ResearchIABGermany
Roper Center for Public Opinion ResearchUS
Stanford UniversityUS
Survey Research Operations, University of MichiganUS
Swedish National Data ServiceSNDSweden
Swiss Foundation for Research in Social SciencesFORSSwiss
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Associate Member)US
UK Data ArchiveUKHLS/BHPSUK
University of AlbertaCanada
University of CaliforniaUCDATAUS
University of GuelphCanada
University of Minnesota, Minnesota Population CenterMPCUS
University of Toronto Scholars PortalCanada
University of Washington, Center for Studies in Demography & EcologyCSDEUS
University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute on AgingUS
World Bank, Development Data GroupDECDGUS

See also

External links

  • DDI Project

Related software/tools

  • (development was discontinued and Nesstar reached end-of-life status in 2022)
  • Scholars Portal's
  • .