AUSSDA - The Austrian Social Science Data Archive

AUSSDA Dataverse User Guide

What is the AUSSDA Dataverse?

AUSSDA Dataverse is the digital archive of AUSSDA - The Austrian Social Science Data Archive. It is based on the open source application Dataverse which has been developed by Harvard University.

You can archive, find and use AUSSDA data under https://data.aussda.at.

At the moment, the user interface is English only and new entries to the archvie are being provided primarily in English.

Auf der Startseite des AUSSDA Dataverse sieht man neue Dataverses und neue Datensätze, zudem kann man das Dataverse durchsuchen und AUSSDA kontaktieren.

The latest dataveses and datasets can be seen at a glance on the AUSSDA Dataverse start page.

Glossary

On the start page of the AUSSDA Dataverse you can decide whether to create a new account under sign up or log in with an existing username or institutional log in.

Create a new account under "Sign up" or use the option "Log in" to use an existing account.

Create an account

  • Sign-up: Here you can create a new account. Your password must contain: 1) At least 8 characters (passwords of at least 20 characters are exempt from all other requirements) and 2) at least 1 character from 3 of the following types: uppercase, lowercase, numeral, special
  • Login: Log in with your AUSSDA Dataverse username or use your institutional login. If you choose institutional login, look for the English name of your institution.

Dataverse

  • the name of our archival software
  • a "folder" for researchers, projects or journals to share and make their data available
  • a "folder" that can also contain other dataverses

Search

  • Search in English
  • use * to broaden your search

Dataset

  • can contain metadata, research data, documentations or code to be downloaded
  • many datasets can be provided in a single dataverse
  • information about files, metadata, terms and versions are provided on dataset level

Roles and permissions

  • Users can have different roles in different dataverses and for different datasets
  • no login or special permissions are needed to download CC BY licensed datasets
  • to access scientific use files you need to be logged in or get permission from the AUSSDA Team

Files to download

  • AUSSDA makes research data available in Stata (.dta), SPSS (.zsav) and tab-delimited (.tab) format
  • Data is assigned the categories "Data" and "STATA" or "SPSS", documentations the category "Documentation"

Screenshot der Filebennungsstrategie bei AUSSDA

File naming and legend I

10007_da_en_v1_2.dta

  • 10007 - example for an archival number
  • da - data file
  • en - English (alternatives are e.g. de - German, fr - French)
  • v1_2: version number (Major version: 1, minor version: 2)
  • .dta - STATA file

Versioning

AUSSDA versions files on two levels: 1_0 (major-minor)  

  • Major: big changes like deletion or insertion of a variable or case leads to a major file versioning update
  • Minor: on this level, we differentiate between significant changes (corrections to labels or other recodings) and not significant changes (e.g. cosmetic). Not significant changes are only modified in files when a significant change is necessary.

File naming and legend II

da - Data

qu - Questionnaire

im - Interviewer manual

fr - Field report

co - Codebook

rr - Research report

mr - Method report

om - Other material

ta - table belt

te - text report, text comment

gr - graphic belt