The Data Chronicles: A Repository for Social Science Metadata

Principal Investigator - Karen Clarke (karen.clarke@manchester.ac.uk)

Co-Principal Investigator - Judith Aldridge

Start Date - October 2005

Duration - 15 months

Location - University of Manchester

The Data Grid is a key element of the e-social science project. Work within the Data Grid has hitherto aimed to facilitate access to different data sources and promote remote collaborative working. However, there are broader difficulties in accessing and using social data. Existing data archives do not generally include administrative data, produced by government departments and other agencies in the course of their work; researchers require ¡®expert knowledge' of a field in order to locate relevant data; and researchers require extensive knowledge of how data was gathered and concepts were defined in order to draw appropriate conclusions. This project will investigate the feasibility of constructing a ¡®Repository' of metadata that could resolve these problems.

Our proposed Repository represents an advance on existing archives in three respects. First, researchers need to be able to locate and utilise administrative data sources as well as survey data; the Repository will include metadata on these sources. Second, users will be able to search the Repository using either generic or specialised terms; users will not require expert knowledge of how terms are defined within data sources ¨C or even whether sources exist ¨C in order to find them. Third, the metadata to be held will include references to key debates, recognising that social science concepts cannot be defined ¡®once and for all'. After consultation with topic area experts and archivists, a pilot repository will be built, focusing on data sources for drugs, alcohol and tobacco. This will enable assessment of the feasibility of a long-term Repository of metadata covering the full range of social data sources, and how such a large scale project might be maintained and funded. It will also produce a resource to be made available through the Web, which will be useful to others with an interest in our topic area of drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

Presentations

A tree full of leaves: description logic and data documentation
P. Edwards, J. Aldridge, K. Clarke, University of Manchester
2nd International Conference on e-Social Science, Manchester, 28 ¨C 30 June 2006

Presentation

Cloudbuilding: Semantic Imprecision in Social Science Data (and how to live with it)
P. Edwards University of Manchester
2nd International Conference on e-Social Science, Manchester, 28 ¨C 30 June 2006

Presentation

Publications

A tree full of leaves: description logic and data documentation
P. Edwards, J. Aldridge, K. Clarke, University of Manchester
Published in the Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on e-Social Science, Manchester, 28 ¨C 30 June 2006

Paper