Improving metadata infrastructure for complex surveys: Insights from the Fragile Families Challenge

Alexander Kindel, Vineet Bansal, Kristin Catena, Thomas Hartshorne, Kate Jaeger, Dawn Koffman, Sara McLanahan, Maya Phillips, Shiva Rouhani and Ryan Vinh
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Alexander Kindel: Princeton University

No u8spj, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Researchers rely on metadata systems to prepare data for analysis. As the complexity of datasets increases and the breadth of data analysis practices grow, existing metadata systems can limit the efficiency and quality of data preparation. This article describes the redesign of a metadata system supporting the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study based on the experiences of participants in the Fragile Families Challenge. We demonstrate how treating metadata as data—that is, releasing comprehensive information about variables in a format amenable to both automated and manual processing—can make the task of data preparation less arduous and less error-prone for all types of data analysis. We hope that our work will facilitate new applications of machine learning methods to longitudinal surveys and inspire research on data preparation in the social sciences. We have open-sourced the tools we created so that others can use and improve them.

Date: 2018-09-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:u8spj

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/u8spj

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