The data were processed to the UK Data Archive's A* standard. This is the Archive's highest standard, and means that an extremely rigorous and comprehensive series of checks was carried out to ensure the quality of the data and documentation. Firstly, checks were made that the number of cases and variables matched the depositor's records. Secondly, checks were made that all variables had comprehensible variable labels and all nominal (categorical) variables had comprehensible value labels. Where possible, either with reference to the documentation and/or in communication with the depositor, labels were accordingly edited or created. Thirdly, logical checks were performed to ensure that nominal (categorical) variables had values within the range defined (either by value labels or in the depositor's documentation). Lastly, any data or documentation that breached confidentiality rules were altered or suppressed to preserve anonymity.
All notable and/or outstanding problems discovered are detailed under the
'Data and documentation problems' heading below.
Data and
documentation problems
Useful Notes
This collection, processed as part of the
Digital Futures project, was further enhanced to prepare them for ingest into
QualiBank, the UK Data Service's online tool for browsing, searching and citing
the content of selected qualitative data. Enhancements included the addition of
QuDEx compliant metadata, as well as TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) metadata,
which marked up header information and paragraph structures, and the creation of
XML files. Some reports contained a table of statistics, which the XML files
could not recognise and thus display the data differently than the original
documents. The rtf files, however, were entered by hand and reflect the format
of the original documents. These are available via the download bundle.
Conversion of documentation formats
Electronic and paper documentation supplied with this study is usually incorporated into the UKDA User Guide (in PDF format). The conversion programmes used are the latest versions of Adobe PDF Writer for electronic documentation and Adobe Paper Capture (Acrobat 'plugin' version) for paper documentation. Occasionally, some�of the electronic documentation cannot be usefully converted to PDF (e.g. MS Excel files with wide worksheets) and this is supplied in�a more appropriate format. All User Guides are fully bookmarked.