Navigating Waves: Using DDI and Colectica to Enhance Interoperability Within and Among Longitudinal Series

In this presentation, I plan to describe NACDA’s efforts to create information-rich metadata that documents the comparability of variables in longitudinal series on aging, as well as how this metadata is made available to the public.

The National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA) began working with DDI-Lifecycle (DDI-L) in 2018. Since then, NACDA has documented some of its most established and frequently-used longitudinal data collections to DDI-L and displayed them in a Colectica Portal. In this presentation, I will discuss how this portal functions, how our use of the portal has evolved, and our plans for the future. In particular, I will highlight the creation and presentation of cross-wave concordance documentation for a single series, concordance documentation for two separate series, and concordance documentation for three or more series.

NACDA is part of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and based at the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan.