Qualitative Data Subgroup

Please note that the work of this subgroup has been transferred to the Qualitative Data Working Group (QDWG) . Please refer to that QDWG page to stay informed about the current work on qualitative data and CDI.

This page is meant to provide information about the subgroup under DDI-CDI dealing with qualitative data . It was initiated at Dagstuhl 2023 as Non-Numeric, Non-Code Datums Here you will find important documentation and information about the group, its purpose, members and useful links and materials.

Purpose of the group

The goal of the group is to provide the means (using DDI-CDI) to render qualitative data (see definition above) in an interoperable way, so that any researcher, regardless of their research methods or discipline, can employ it for their own research questions and eventually combine it with other data.

Anyone interested in contributing to this work should contact us (Email addresses below)

You can read about the origins of the Qualitative Data Subgroup within DDI-CDI in this presentation:

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10225400

For an introduction to the scope of our work, see the slides

and

or

the poster https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14039150

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.

Members
Noemi Betancort	noemi.betancort@suub.uni-bremen.de
Kati Mozygemba	k.mozygemba@uni-bremen.de
Arofan Gregory	ilg21@yahoo.com
Hilde Orten	hilde.orten@sikt.no
Dan Gillman	Gillman.Daniel@bls.gov
Filipi Miranda Soares	filipi.miranda-soares@inrae.fr
Darren Bell	dbell@essex.ac.uk
Sebastian Karcher	skarcher@syr.edu
Elizabeth Lea (Libby) Bishop	Elizabeth.Lea.Bishop@icloud.com

Meeting time and group communication

Regular meeting time for Qualitative Data DDI-CDI-Subgroup. The meeting will take place EVERY 2 WEEKS Friday at 08:00 Minneapolis, 09:00 New York/Ottawa, 15:00 Central European.

Meeting dates: every 2 weeks

Please use the prefix [QD] for the Qualitative Data subgroup when communicating to the DDI-CDI mailing list

Meeting minutes

QD meeting minutes

Meeting Documents

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/109-wKBza_YhEE1YHWe3vwIVXQ9pS4wsE/

Working documents

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QaIbjw81KsjrqEsxPMU_k3OaFER8rPkrxFd2fJEf3OE/edit#heading=h.qt4yh0mzx9q6

Current work area : Review of proposed amendments

Jul 22, 2025

Organization of the new working group focusing on solutions for qualitative data across the product suite, which has been approved by the Scientific Board (QDWG)
Proposed amendments (Dec 5, 2024 ) to DDI-CDI 1.0 to accommodate qualitative data are under review by the TC and the main DDI-CDI group

We have started to collect use cases information and are currently evaluating one use case with social media data and other one with data from a mixed methods social science study.

Use cases are examples of studies or datasets in which qualitative data is being/has been collected and has the potential to be reused in other studies and/or disciplines, or combined with other (e.g. quantitative) data.

More use cases are welcome! Please contact noemi.betancort@suub.uni-bremen.de

Scope: Gather information on existing national and international case studies that illustrate use cases related to non-numeric, qualitative data.

Goal: We are pursuing the goal of finding out how to provide non-numeric / qualitative data so that it is ready for (re)analysis. With the use cases we will get an overview of the different types of qualitative data, how researchers or data curators work with them and what they need/do to prepare them for analysis, for combination with other collected data, or for use in different softwares.

Useful links

DDI-CDI „Selector“ Field Level Documentation: : https://ddi-cdi.github.io/ddi-cdi_v1.0/field-level-documentation/DDICDILibrary/DataTypes/StructuredDataTypes/Selector.html

Web Annotation Data Model: W3C Recommendation 23 February 2017. https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-model/

Media Fragments URI 1.0 (basic): W3C Recommendation 25 September 2012. https://www.w3.org/TR/media-frags/

Selectors Level 3: W3C Recommendation 06 November 2018. https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/REC-selectors-3-20181106/

Publications

Qualitative Data and DDI: Chances to move forward

DDI Alliance Annual Meeting of the Scientific Community, May 2024 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11463891

Improving interdisciplinary research with cross-domain metadata for qualitative data objects. Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration (HMC) Conference 2024 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14039150

Links to related pages

Cross Domain Integration (CDI) Working Group (parent group)