UWSC is pleased to share news from one of our flagship studies, The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS).
The WLS team recently announced the rollout of a new online portal that is designed to enhance the data exploration and analysis experience for researchers and data users. The new platform is based on the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) Lifecycle metadata standard, an international standard for describing survey data. The updated portal supports integrated documentation of longitudinal datasets like the WLS, and will replace the study’s older system of online codebooks, offering richly-described metadata, summary statistics, and data visualizations for all 27,000 WLS variables. Access to datasets, instruments, and supporting documents continues to be available on the main WLS website.
“Adopting this web portal puts WLS at the forefront of the Open Data movement and fulfills NIA-mandates for sharing federally funded data. The WLS dataset is now described using a metadata standard from the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) that documents the unique characteristics of longitudinal data. This allows WLS to produce dynamic documentation in a variety of formats and systems, with the potential to create custom data extracts so that researchers can concentrate on data analysis instead of data management. And thanks to UWSC employing data collection software that is DDI compliant, details of the data collection process are captured in a machine-actionable manner that ensures accurate data and efficient documentation.”
-Dr. Barry Radler, Data Scientist, Wisconsin Longitudinal Study