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Guides thématiques

Research Data

Reuse your data, document it

Gather together all the necessary information for understanding your data.
 
  • How has the data been constituted? Through archives you have consulted, interviews, surveys you have conducted, a financial database you have purchased, or perhaps from web-based data?
  • In what ways have you processed your data? How did you go from raw to refined data?
  • What variables did you use? How are they structured in your files? By date, number, text?
  • Who participated at the various stages of work on the data, i.e. entry, processing, coordination, etc.? 

Recording your answers to these questions from the outset of your research will enable you to reuse and share your data easily.

> DOCUMENTATION

Recording all the processing done to the data (collection, cleaning, fusion, encoding, etc.) enables you to retrace the different stages of your work in order to maintain a clear understanding of your data.

[Video] Tips on Documentation, John MacInne, Professor of Sociology, University of Edinburgh (MANTRA) Licence Creative Commons

> DATASET ?

A dataset is comprised of a collection of data files forming an intellectual unit, as well as the documentation of this data and its metadata (administrative and structural descriptions).

DATASET = DATA + DOCUMENTATION + METADATA

> METADATA

​Title, author, date, publisher, etc. – these constitute the metadata of your publications. Your data can also be described using metadata (type of data, creation date of dataset, manager name, version, format, etc.).

►​ SCIENCES PO HAS ADOPTED THE DDI STANDARD

DDI (Data Documentation Initiative) is the scheme operating natively in data.sciencespo (available soon), the Sciences Po data repository.
Designed for data produced in the social sciences, it is particularly well adapted to describing survey data.

►​ NEED HELP?

If you would like to deposit your data in data.sciencespo or in any other repository, contact the library’s Data Team.

[Video] Les schémas de métadonnées (DoRANum) Licence Creative Commons


Credits: This guide is written by the Library Research Data team in collaboration with the Sciences Po research centers, the Office for Research (DS) and the Office of Information Systems (DSI). For more information, please contact the Data team: data.bib@sciencespo.fr. Translation : Anita Beldiman-Moore, Sophie Forcadell from the Library.

Legal notices: https://www.sciencespo.fr/bibliotheque/en/legal-notices.html

Dernière mise à jour: Oct 18, 2021 5:34 PM