This document discusses academic writing standards for research data management and documentation. It provides examples of documentation from the European Values Study conducted in 1981, 1990, 1999, and 2008. The analysis found improvements over time in documenting the sample, methodology, variables, and providing references to allow other researchers to understand and replicate the work. Standards evolved as the replication movement increased, making methodology sections more transparent and data more reusable.

1. Academic writing and Research Data
Management
Alexia Katsanidou, Uwe Jensen, Laurence Horton
GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
archive.training@gesis.org
@archivetraining
www.gesis.org/admtc
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
License.

2. Structured metadata
Title
Principal Investigator(s)
Funder
Catalogue number
Abstract
Keywords
File format(s)
Date(s) of collection
Geographic (spatial) unit(s)
Universe of analysis
Case count
Documentation
Tools for data collection
Sampling frame & procedure
Weighting/control actions
Variables list
Version
License/Usage agreement
Ownership
Citation text
Publication requirement
Contact information
Data description
Description of
methodology used
Description of
requirements for access
Standardized fields
to be populated by
the project/archive

3. Documentation
• Contextual materials generated by project
as part of data gathering
– Questionnaire
– Interviewer instructions
– Flash cards
– Funding applications/end of award reports

4. Standards and re-use feedback loop
Metadata and documentation
standards
Methodology sections
Single
Paper
Many papers

5. Journal article methodology sections
The authors describe how they
tested their hypotheses and how
they produced their results.
Replication movement increases the
standards to achieve:
1. Transparency
2. Rigorous review Process
3. Higher quality
4. Academic excellence
5. Educational value
6. … Replicability

6. Components
• Data description
 Dataset used
 Sample description
 Fieldwork Information
 Response rates
 Survey Methodology used
• Variable description
 Variables used
 Question wording
 Variable scale
 Re-coding
 Harmonization
 Index building
 Dimension Building

7. Quality of the methods section
Is it replicable?
King (2003):
“Sufficient information exists with which to
understand evaluate and build upon a prior
work if a third party can replicate the results
without any additional information from the
author”

8. Our methodology
European Values Study
• 1981
• 1990
• 1999
• 2008
Articles:
• Published with these
datasets
• In peer reviewed journals
• http://evs.uvt.nl
• Analysis of their methods
section

9. EVS documentation
Wave Questionnaires Codebook (variable
report)
Other documents
1981 15: Fourteen individual country
questionnaires in native languages as PDF
documents (some OCR readable), plus one
“basic” questionnaire.
Yes • Weighting remarks
1990 30: Twenty nine individual country
questionnaires in native languages as PDF
documents (some OCR readable), plus one
“basic” questionnaire.
Yes • Weighting remarks
1999 34: Thirty three individual country
questionnaires in native languages as PDF
documents (OCR readable), plus one
“master” questionnaire.
Yes (8 individual country
reports)
• Weighting remarks
• List of Digital Object
Identifiers
• Data Depositor Report
2008 48: Forty seven individual country
questionnaires in native languages as PDF
documents (OCR readable), plus “master”
questionnaire
Yes • Weighting remarks
• List of Digital Object
Identifiers
• Method report
• Guidelines

10. Referring to the data
1981 1990 1999 2008
N 8 9 9 5
Reference
to the Data
8 9 9 5
Where to find 1 4 6 5
Full reference (without DOI) 0 4 5 0
Full DOI reference 0 0 0 4

11. Dataset Description
1981 1990 1999 2008
N 8 9 9 5
Sample description 8 3 9 5
Response Rate 2 0 1 0
Fieldwork 7 2 2 2
Missing Cases 1 0 3 5
Sample 8 3 9 5

12. Variable Description
1981 1990 1999 2008
N 8 9 9 5
Question phrasing 5 6 7 3
Original scales 7 5 8 5

13. Conclusions
• 1981  no re-use community/primary
research
• 1990  re-use community widens, but no
standards, hence the drop
• 1999 onwards  stable development of
replication and documentation standards
• Clear trends in data reference
• Treating the dataset as a publication