Yes, the "codebook" for the study should have all the metadata necessary. But are the codebooks searchable? If the repository is of any size at all, then it needs to be searchable. Would you like to read all the codebooks in order to see if there was any data you could use? If the codebooks are disassembled and placed in a database that allows searching then the repository is very useful. My guess is that codebooks are idiosyncratic and of wildly varying quality. This means that the metadata would be incomplete in many cases. This raises the issue of what the metadata should include. jeremy hunsinger wrote:
I'm not sure what level of metadata you are talking about here... collecting a description of the study, the authors, the coding, etc. should all be public in the codebook for the study... if it is not then the study probably wouldn't be useful to others in any case. perhaps I am on the wrong track here?
The question of metadata raises a difficult barrier to building the proposed repository. Data is pretty much useless without metadata. The amount of work required to obtain useful metadata is likely to exceed what a volunteer effort can suppor
jeremy hunsinger on the ibook www.cddc.vt.edu www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy
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