Qualitative Data Subgroup

This group is focused on the description of qualitative data coming from any discipline or domain, as an extension of the DDI-CDI model, so that it can be exchanged, managed, and analyzed together with or independent of quantitative data.

Like other parts of DDI-CDI, this work is intended to complement other, domain-agnostic standards such as those coming from the W3C.

Qualitative data is generally understood to be that data not intended to be described using the existing DDI-CDI model, which is mostly designed for data structured in a tabular form, consisting primarily of numeric and coded measurements and their supporting attributes.

Qualitative data is data such as images, video, audio, free text, and similar types of resources used as the source of research.

This model will be aligned with the existing DDI-CDI model to the greatest reasonable extent, and will - like the description of quantitative data - avoid the embedding of domain-specific methods and semantics, to make the model as general as possible.

The model will attempt to describe generic aspects of qualitative data, including both logical and physical structures and arrangements, and relationship to external controlled vocabularies, classifications, and ontologies as a source of domain semantics.

The goal is to provide a sufficient description of the data so that it can be exchanged, managed, and reused in analysis in a machine-actionable fashion.