Documenting the research life cycle: one data model, many products

Technical documentation for social science data is produced by a range of technologies in a variety of environments. While statistical agencies generally standardise the content and the look and feel of the documentation they produce, each agency approaches the task differently. Documentation produced by individual researchers shows even more variety. This heterogeneity in documentation comes at a cost – for data archivists who have had to adjust to new documentation styles with each data deposit in order to curate the collection, and for secondary data analysts attempting to understand datasets with which they were not familiar.