As the variable is one of the most relevant entities to enhance data reuse in the Social Sciences, we provide a framework design to better semantics the variables' relations descriptions. These explicit relations between variables enable comparability and facilitate harmonization across waves. We provide a brief textual identification of the relation type, supported by a controlled vocabulary (CV) and an extended description of the relationship. These relations within variables include but are not limited to different versions, derived formats in new waves, new labels and name wording, and alternative response schema through questionnaires and surveys. For instance, a given variable label is changed from one wave to another, even though its concept remains the same. Their values also are subject to change, such as new cardinalities settings, their categorization, or response scheme and scale measurement. They change based on different conditions, e.g., values are updated by any constraints or modified to comply with the study evolution requirements or a new sociological approach. In the Social Sciences, Economics, and Behaviour Sciences, which investigate, for instance, the social structure of the population, political attitudes of voters and candidates, opinions on family, work, religion, politics and society or competencies of adults, those topics are highly subject to change to fit the empirical reality in a constantly changing world. Thus, we propose widening relations descriptions for Social Sciences variables within datasets beginning from the BasedOnObjectType DDI as a first approach.
gesis.variables-relationsA summary of the relations in the Bioregistry schema can be found here.
A provider turns a local unique identifiers from a resource into a URI. Many providers are also resolvable as URLs (i.e., they can be used in a web browser).
The local unique identifier 01 is used to demonstrate the providers
available for Variables relations for Social Sciences research data. Some providers may use a different example, which is displayed in the table below.
A guide for curating additional providers can be found
here.
| Name | Metaprefix | URI |
|---|---|---|
| Variables relations for Social Sciences research data | gesis.variables-relations |
https://vocabularies.cessda.eu/vocabulary/Variables-Relations?lang=en#code_01 |
| Bioregistry | bioregistry |
https://bioregistry.io/gesis.variables-relations:01 |