Data Documentation Initiative
The Data Documentation Initiative is an international standard for describing surveys, questionnaires, statistical data files, and social sciences study-level information. This information is described as metadata by the standard.
Begun in 1995, the effort brings together data professionals from around the world to develop the standard. The DDI specification, most often expressed in XML, provides a format for content, exchange, and preservation of questionnaire and data file information. DDI supports the description, storage, and distribution of social science data, creating an international specification that is machine-actionable and web-friendly.
Version 2 of the DDI standard has been implemented in the Dataverse data repository and the data archives of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. The latest version 3.3 of the DDI standard was released in 2020.
Member Institutionshttps://www.ddialliance.org/ddi-membership DDI-Members
| Institution | Abbr. | Country |
| Aristotle Cloud Services Australia | ACSA | Australia |
| Australian Bureau of Statistics | ABS | Australia |
| Centro De Investigaciones Sociológicas | CIS | Spain |
| Colectica | Colectica | US |
| Cornell University | CISER | US |
| Danish Data Archive | DDA | Denmark |
| Data Archiving and Networked Services | DANS | Netherlands |
| Finnish Social Science Data Archive | Finland | |
| German Socio-Economic Panel Study | SOEP | Germany |
| GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences | GESIS | Germany |
| Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University | IQSS | US |
| Institute for the Study of Labor | IZA | Germany |
| Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research | ICPSR | US |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | MIT | US |
| Norwegian Social Science Data Services | NSD | Norway |
| Open Data Foundation | ||
| Princeton University | US | |
| Research Data Centre of the German Federal Employment Agency, Institute for Employment Research | IAB | Germany |
| Roper Center for Public Opinion Research | US | |
| Stanford University | US | |
| Survey Research Operations, University of Michigan | US | |
| Swedish National Data Service | SND | Sweden |
| Swiss Foundation for Research in Social Sciences | FORS | Swiss |
| U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | US | |
| UK Data Archive | UKHLS/BHPS | UK |
| University of Alberta | Canada | |
| University of California | UCDATA | US |
| University of Guelph | Canada | |
| University of Minnesota, Minnesota Population Center | MPC | US |
| University of Toronto Scholars Portal | Canada | |
| University of Washington, Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology | CSDE | US |
| University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute on Aging | US | |
| World Bank, Development Data Group | DECDG | US |