Providing Context for Understanding: Insight from Research on Two Canadian Health Surveys

In the session on "Enriching Metadata: the Lifecycle Perspective" the presentation "Providing context for understanding: the data life cycle" was given by Elizabeth Hamilton from the University of New Brunswick, Canada. Elizabeth Hamilton has turned the presentation into the paper "Providing Context for Understanding: Insight from Research on Two Canadian Health Surveys". She uses the National Population Health Survey (NPHS) and the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) as cases for evaluation of documentation using the DDI-format (Data Documentation Initiative). The conclusion is that there is a need for placing the survey data in context, and that some information (metadata) from the earliest part of the data life-cycle is "integral contextual information and as such should be identified, described and preserved, in addition to the formal data collection itself". Can we say we can trust the data? Elizabeth Hamilton want to be able to give a clear positive answer with the addition: "We have a complete record of evolution of that question, from concept to analysis."