ABOUT DExT

Data conversion and proprietary data entry and analysis are particularly important and problematic aspects of data management and curation. This proposal aims to provide researchers and support staff working with primary research data with a suite of tools that will enable data to be long-term curated and exchangeable.  The tools will research and both develop and test tools for contemporary quantitative data or statistical data and qualitative data typically used by social researchers.

The project aims to develop, refine and test models for data exchange for both survey data and qualitative research data based on XML/RDF schema and will develop tools for data import and export. The work will also research the feasibility of developing automated conversion procedures for legacy formats. The data formats to be included are those that are commonly used in research such as SPSS, STATA, XML, Atlas-ti, MaxQDA and Nvivo. The test data selected for this project are from the social sciences, but these formats are typically found across all domains of primary research. A small scale evaluation of the models and tools will be carried out in order to inform JISC of the most viable options for future development in this area.

A longer-term aim of this work would be to build a fully functional and scalable facility or service where data formats can be submitted and seamlessly returned in a chosen, desired format. The work in this proposal aims to lay the foundations upon which such a sustainable service could be built.

The project is led by the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex.