Stata export for metadata documentation

Precise and detailed data documentation is essential for the secondary analysis of scientific data, whether they are survey or official microdata. Among the most important metadata in this perspective are variable and category labels and frequency distributions and descriptive statistics. To generate and publish these metadata from Stata datafiles, an efficient export interface is essential. It must be able to handle large and complex datasets, account for the specifics of different studies, and generate flexible output formats (depending on the requirements of the documentation system). As a solution to the problem described above, we present the process developed in the GML (German Microdata Lab) at GESIS. In the first step, we show how an aggregated file with all required metadata can be generated from the microdata. In the second step, this file is transformed into a standardized DDI format. Additionally, we will present the implementation for MISSY (the metadata information system for official microdata at GESIS), which includes some practical additions (for example, communication with the MISSY database to retrieve existing element identifiers, writing an output tailored to the MISSY data model).