Data Management Glossary

Archive: To transfer records from the individual or office of creation to a repository authorized to appraise, preserve, and provide access to those records. In the computing world, it refers to storing data offline.

Archives: Materials created or received by a person, family, or organization, public or private, in the conduct of their affairs and preserved because of the enduring value contained in the information they contain or as evidence of the functions and responsibilities of their creator. Also, an organization that collects the records of individuals, families, or other organizations; a collecting archives.

Backup: A copy of all or portions of software or data files on a system kept on storage media, such as tape or disk, or on a separate system so that the files can be restored if the original data is deleted or damaged.

Classification scheme: A diagram or chart that describes standard categories used to organize materials with similar characteristics.

Code: In most numeric data files, answers to questions are recorded with numbers rather than text, and often even numeric answers are recorded with numbers other than the actual response. The numbers used in the data file are called "codes."

Codebook: Generically, any information on the structure, contents, and layout of a data file. Typically, a codebook includes: column locations and widths for each variable; definitions of different record types; response codes for each variable; codes used to indicate nonresponse and missing data; exact questions and skip patterns used in a survey; and other indications of the content of each variable.

Confidentiality: Right of privacy and of non-release of disclosed personal information.

Data Documentation Initiative: An effort to develop a specification for documenting data files in XML.

Data format: A structure used for the interchange, storage, or display of data.

Data integrity: The quality of being free of corruption, especially as a result of broken links between segments, of errors resulting from read or write operations, or of malicious tampering.

Dataset: A collection of related information, especially information formatted for analysis by a computer.

Disposition: Materials' final destruction or transfer to an archives as determined by their retention period.

Double data entry: The process of converting verbal or written responses to electronic form (also known as blind data entry) twice and reviewing the two entries for error.

File plan: A classification scheme describing different types of files, how they are identified, where they should be stored, how they should be indexed for retrieval.

Files management: Oversight of the administration of activities relating to the creation, use, maintenance, and disposal of files, including design and review of classification systems, equipment, and procedures, in order to ensure that the operations are efficient and economical.

Informed consent: Informed consent means "knowing consent," the exercise of a free power of choice without undue inducement, force, fraud, deceit, duress, or other form of constraint or coercion.

Interoperability: The ability of different systems to use and exchange information through a shared format.

Metadata: A characterization or description documenting the identification, management, nature, use, or location of information resources (data).

Records retention: The length of time records should be kept in a certain location or form for administrative, legal, fiscal, historical, or other purposes.

Repository: Any type of organization that holds documents, including business, institutional, and government archives, manuscript collections, libraries, museums, and historical societies, and in any form, including manuscripts, photographs, moving image and sound materials, and their electronic equivalents.

Respondent: In survey research, the person responding to the survey questions.

Many of the terms listed above were defined with help from the Society of American Archivists' Glossary of Archival Terminology and ICPSR's Glossary. For further information, here is a list of external resources about data management and records preservation through the research process.

Maintained by: Erin O'Meara, erino@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 11/12/2007