Coding rules

In order to ensure consistency for the data in WeSIS as well as the documentation in WeSISpedia, several coding rules and documentation standards have been established.

Data collection

Date Time: Dates, e.g. the introduction of laws, election dates etc. must be entered as YYYY.MM.DD.

For date times the following rules apply in descending order:

1. Whenever possible, add the complete date.
2. If an event (like an election) took place on more than one day enter the first day of the period.
3. If the day is unknown, enter YYYY.MM. While importing data to WeSIS an internal flag will be set that the day is unknown.
4. If evn the month is unknown, just enter YYYY. Internally, a flag will be set that both the day and month are unknown.
5. The default reference date for all yearly data is December 31, if not explicitly stated otherwise on the indicator page.

Country codes: WeSIS makes use of the entity codes defined by the Corrrelates of War project (COW). See the entire list and additional notes on the country codes page.

Technical variable names: Within WeSIS every indicator has a technical name. The topics define the initial abbreviation followed by an underscore. Add a meaningful suffix afterwards using underscores as well, e.g. polnat_election_date_1st_chamber (not polnat.electiondate) for an indicator capturing the election date of the 1st chamber. The name must be unique and may encompass subtopics, units and sources if necessary.

A general example reads as follows: topic_subcategory1_subcategory2_name_unit_source (e.g. health_hospitalBeds_per1000_IBGE, econrel_trade_total_import_usd_wto).

Note: Try to not exceed the limit of 128 characters for the full name including any underscore.

Social policies (Y)

Topic	Abbreviation
Old age and survivors	old
Labour and labour market	labor
Health and long-term care	health
Education and training	edu
Family policies	fam
Gender aspects	gend

Domestic conditions (X1)

Topic	Abbreviation
Policy legacies	polleg
Economic and financial factors	econnat
Political factors	polnat
Social structure	socstr
Culture	cult
Geography	geo

Interdependencies and relations (X2)

Topic	Abbreviation
Communication	comm
Political institutional linkages	polrel
Economic relations	econrel
Migration	migra
Violent conflicts	confl

Spelling

BE or AE: In WeSISpedia American English shall be used.

Capitalization: Indicator names (and hence page titles) shall not be capitalized. For general guidelines please refer to Wikipedia's Manual of Style as well.

Citation

WeSISpedia applies the citation style of the American Political Science Review in line with the American Political Science Association's official style guide. The style uses the author-date system for in-text citations. It is used in the following format: (Author Year, Pages). There is no comma between the author and the year whereas mass citations are separated with a semicolon.

The citation style is readily available as a template in Citavi and RefWorks and can be downloaded for Zotero, EndNote or Mendeley.

Below you will find some examples for referencing common types of publication. Please refer to the APSA Style Guide for further information:

• Edited Volumes: Castles, Francis G., Stephan Leibfried, Jane Lewis, Herbert Obinger, and Christopher Pierson, eds. 2010. The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Monograph: Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Report (Monograph): OECD. 2006. Taxing Wages 2004/2005. Special Feature: Part-Time Work and Taxing Wages. Paris: OECD Publishing.
• Journal Article: Schmitt, Carina. 2014. "The Diffusion of Privatization in Europe: Political Affinity or Economic Competition?" Public Administration 92 (3): 615-635.
• Working Paper: Schmitt, Carina, and Herbert Obinger. 2012. Policy Diffusion and Social Rights in Advanced Democracies 1960-2000. Bremen: Zentrum für Sozialpolitik. ZeS-Working Paper, 02/2012.