1.
Questasy: Documenting and Disseminating Longitudinal Data Online with DDI 3
Edwin de Vet
11/14/2018

2. CentERdata Research institute Data collection Quantitative Analysis
CentERdata
Research institute
University of Tilburg, Netherlands
Data collection
Manage several panels
Quantitative Analysis
Software solutions
11/14/2018

3. LISS Panel ~6000 households in Netherlands
LISS Panel
~6000 households in Netherlands
Studies conducted on various schedules
Includes longitudinal studies
Datasets prepared on various schedules
11/14/2018

4. Questasy Web application based on DDI 3 Manages data & metadata
Questasy
Web application based on DDI 3
Manages data & metadata
Written in CakePHP (MySQL)
Theming
Sphinx search engine
11/14/2018

5. Features Public Researcher Administrator
Browse studies, questions, variables, publications, concepts, topics, codebooks
Researcher
Download datasets, create custom datasets (basket)
Administrator
Enter and edit metadata & data, upload of files
11/14/2018

6. DDI - Questasy Study Unit Conceptual Component Concept Scheme Concept
DDI - Questasy
Study Unit
Conceptual Component
Concept Scheme
Concept
Data Collection
Collection Event
Question Scheme
Question Item
Construct Scheme
Question Construct
Logical Product
Category Scheme
Category
Code Scheme
Code
Variable Scheme
Variable
Phys. Data Product
Physical Instance
11/14/2018

7. Questasy 5.0 – New features
Questions: multilingual
DDI 3.1 import
11/14/2018

8. Multilingual – Up to version 4.3
Tables for questions and categories contain two fields for languages
LISS data: two languages (English – Dutch)
SCP data: one language (English)
11/14/2018

9. Overview Questionnaire
11/14/2018

10. Question View – LISS data
11/14/2018

11. Question View – SCP data
11/14/2018

12. SHARE project Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe
Face-to-face interviews
Interviews programmed in Blaise
Interviews translated into various European languages (> 20)
11/14/2018

13. Multilingual New tables for question texts (and category texts)
Configurable
Backwards compatible
Question Item
Question Text
text
Lang
5.0
Question Item
text1
text2
Up to 4.3
11/14/2018

14. Questionnaire Overview
11/14/2018

15. Questionnaire Overview
11/14/2018

16. Single question view
11/14/2018

17. Import of metadata before 5.0
Variables: OMS import from SPSS
get file = "SPSSfile.sav" . oms /destination format = oxml outfile = "OMSfile.xml" viewer = no . display . omsend .
Questions: Blaise import
Only on Windows servers with Blaise installed, uses the .bmi file
Custom import
Done for study Cultural Changes (Netherlands Institute for Social Research)
Manually
11/14/2018

18. DDI 3.1 Import DDI 3.1 export already existed
Import and export supports single wave and longitudinal studies
Import and export supports multilingual questions
11/14/2018

19. DDI Import - Single wave
StudyUnit
Question Constructs
Question Items
ns1:DDIInstance
s:StudyUnit
d:DataCollection
d:QuestionScheme
d:ControlConstructScheme
l:LogicalProduct
l:CategoryScheme (multiple)
l:CodeScheme (multiple)
l:VariableScheme
11/14/2018

20. DDI Import - Longitudinal study
StudyUnit
Wave 1
Wave 2
Wave 3
Longitudinal study
Question Constructs
Question Items
ns1:DDIInstance
g:Group
g:StudyUnit (multiple)
s:StudyUnit
d:DataCollection
d:ControlConstructScheme
l:LogicalProduct
l:VariableScheme
g:ResourcePackage
d:QuestionScheme
l:CategoryScheme (multiple)
l:CodeScheme (multiple)
11/14/2018

21. DDI Import - Interface
11/14/2018

22. DDI used to transfer metadata
Transfer data between one Questasy instance to another instance
Transfer data between Questasy and other applications (TMT)
Conclusion: it works!
11/14/2018

23. Data Downloadable SPSS/Stata files Variable basket
Researcher can select variables
Questasy produces custom dataset and codebook (PDF/HTML)
Uses datawarehouse / StatTransfer
11/14/2018

24. Work in progress / Future work
Routing of questionnaires
Summary Statistics
Sphinx search engine – use of prefixes
Include routing and summary statistics into DDI import/export
Implement DDI 3.2
Improve custom PDF codebooks
11/14/2018

25. Routing Input as text Simple parser of Blaise like syntax
Keywords: if, then, else, elseif, endif, for, while, do, endwhile, endfor
11/14/2018

26. Variable Summary Statistics
General table added to database
Coupled to datawarehouse
Calculates summary statistics for numeric values and frequency tables for categories
11/14/2018

27. Example of frequency table
11/14/2018

28. Licensing Free License agreement available
Including source code
License agreement available
Available for non-profit scientific & government institutes
11/14/2018