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Background and scope

Purpose and objectives

Deliverables

Current member institutions

��

The new DDI Qualitative Data Working Group

Noemi Betancort Cabrera �SuUB Bremen, QualidataNet

17th European DDI Users Conference, Budapest, 02.12.2025

In Zusammenarbeit mit

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Background and scope

The DDI product suite

Initial focus: social, economic, and health sciences
Metadata mostly describing

study-level
quantitative (variable) data
questions, questionnaires
archived or shared quantitative data

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Scope: Qualitative data

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Scope: Why?

Significant increase in reuse of qualitative data but still not standardized
Qualitative data are often combined with quantitative data sets, for example in Mixed Methods
Documentation and preparation of qualitative data is resource-intensive and complex
Sharing is still uncommon because of this complexity
New capabilities of AI to improve management and reuse

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Scope: What and For Whom?

What: Provide qualitative data descriptions in an interoperable way to enable reuse

How: Using the DDI product suite to accommodate qualitative data descriptions, especially those from mixed data settings

We need to extend and promote the DDI products for this,
building on a broad cross-product approach.�

For Whom: People and machines producing or consuming qualitative data

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Background: Progress so far

A significant amount of work on a Qualitative package was done during the DDI Moving Forward project
The DDI-CDI Working Group started looking at ways to incorporate qualitative use cases at Dagstuhl 2023 – a qualitative data subgroup was set up
Dagstuhl Workshop 2024 Describing Non-Quantitative Data
Dagstuhl Workshop 2025 Qualitative Data
June 2025: The new Qualitative Data Working Group (QDWG) was approved by the Scientific Board

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Linking text and audio data available for a particular case

Common use cases

interviewid	surname	available_files
1	Keble	KebleAudioClip.mp3, KebleInterview.txt
2
4
5

What is the audio about?

What was Mr. Keble asked?

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Combining images with measurements

Common use cases

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Common use cases

Providing microdata provenance

interviewid	surname	livesibs
1	Keble	4
2
4
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The value “4” is a code for “large family”:

Full text: https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk//QualiBank/Document/?id=q-25d5254a-efd5-4765-b3a0-19162e141203

Segment:

I: So you were approximately 7 boys, is that right, and 4 girls?

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Common use cases

Contextualizing files (incl. qualitative) in data centers/archives

Contextual information and metadata about collections of files

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Purpose and objectives

Support and guide the development and use of DDI products to manage and describe qualitative and mixed data

Formulating recommendations on extending DDI products and standards

Based on sound uses cases and collaboration

Promoting these products and getting feedback from organizations, communities, and individuals

Developing guidelines and best practices

Assessing AI developments as users or assistants in relation to qualitative data

We see great potential in reusing qualitative data as a valuable research resource across domains. Our goal: help people make their data reusable and interoperable using DDI products.

→ To achieve this, we will:

- Develop recommendations, best practices, and guidelines based on real-world use cases.

- considering the approaches commonly used by those working with qualitative data.

- that should be reviewed by the relevant DDI Working Groups and the Technical Committee.

- Collaborating with external groups when needed.

- Promote DDI products to stakeholders — producers, managers, archivists, researchers — with support from the Training WG.

- Critically assess AI developments that:

a) Help document or manage qualitative/mixed data;

b) Can be trained on or benefit from such data (e.g., LLMs, digital humanities).

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Deliverables

Reporting on challenges and recommendations for improving DDI products.
Best practice guidelines for using and adopting DDI products and standards.
Contributions to the development of DDI products, as appropriate, in collaboration with the corresponding working groups.
Outreach activities to promote the use of DDI products and expand membership.

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Current member institutions

See further unaffiliated members and members’ names under https://ddi-alliance.atlassian.net/wiki/x/AgDg2g#Members

New ones are welcome!

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Web:

https://ddi-alliance.atlassian.net/wiki/x/AgDg2g

DDI QDWG contact:

noemi.betancort@suub.uni-bremen.de

�QualidataNet main contact:

k.mozygemba@uni-bremen.de

https://www.qualidatanet.com/en/

KonsortSWD – NFDI4Society is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)�within the framework of the NFDI – project number: 442494171

Thank you!