Newly introduced Technical Paper Series as an essential part of the documentation of data collection

Documenting the data collection is an essential part of building WeSIS – the Welfare State Information System. Researchers, however, often struggle with the appropriate level of detail ranging from simple accounts of a final indicator to page-long descriptions about how an indicator came into being. Both WeSISPedia and the newly launched Technical Paper Series are an integral part of the documentation. The former serves as a codebook with basic information about variables and indicators collected and stored in WeSIS. As such it merely “describes” the data. The Technical Paper Series in turn allows for a structured way of documenting the data and the data generating process, for detailing country-specific definitions, or for describing complex coding rules. In short, the Technical Paper Series complements and eases the use of WeSIS and its data, and provides a more detailed description beyond a codebook and “hands on” suggestions for handling the data properly.

In the first paper Lara Eiser, Michael Lischka and Tobias Tkaczick describe the procedure of generating metric geographical distance data. Showing on which data basis (CShapes Dataset), with which software (ArcGIS) and which methods/features the WeSIS indicator 'Capital Distance' was created, they document the data generation in a transparent, comprehensible and replicable manner. In addition, the paper offers screenshots for adopting the calculations for further applications.

The Technical Paper Series is coordinated by Nils Düpont.


Contact:
Dr. Nils Düpont
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 7
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57060
E-Mail: duepont@uni-bremen.de