Alternatives for Representing Coding of Qualitative Data in DDI

A DDI Alliance working group on qualitative data has developed a draft model for metadata related to qualitative data collections which also includes the possibility of hybrid collections having both qualitative and quantitative data. This paper describes two alternatives for representing categories, codes and memos from qualitative datasets. These metadata link to segments of qualitative objects. The current qualitative model includes “Analytic Category”, “Analytic Code” and “Memo” metadata elements designed to capture information from qualitative data analysis methods, as well as a “DataSet” element designed to contain related quantitative data, from procedures such as text mining. An alternative approach would be to represent codes, categories, and memos as variables in a data record, associated with a segment of a qualitative object, along with other related any quantitative data. Existing mechanisms in DDI could be used to describe these descriptive variables, as well as share them across studies. Advantages and disadvantages of each approach will be discussed.