Coding rules
Contents
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. shall be entered as YYYY.MM.DD.
For date times the following rules apply in descending order:
- Whenever possible, add the complete date.
- If an event (like an election) took place on more than one day enter the first day of the period.
- If the day is unknown, enter the last of the month and add a new column or field "day_na" = 1.
- If the month is unknown, enter the last of the year and add a new column or field "month_na" = 1.
- The default reference date for all yearly data is December 31, if not explicitly stated otherwise on the indicator page.
Country codes: Several rules apply when assigning country codes to the data:
- COW country codes are preferred over V-Dem and ISO codes.
- Whenever possible, data should be collected for each entity separately.
- Whenever possible, all country codes should be added to ensure comparability.
Note: V-Dem country codes aim at providing a consistent time series for an entity (e.g. Korea is subsumed under South Korea). This way, disassociating data for both entities becomes cumbersome if they should be analyzed separately. Instead, WeSIS' aim is to provide data as "disaggregated" as possible allowing for a flexible case selection and aggregation afterwards.
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, e.g. polnat_election_date (not polnat_electiondate) for an indicator capturing the election date.
| Topic | Abbreviation |
|---|---|
| Old Age and Survivors | old |
| Labour and Labour Market | labor |
| Health and Long-Term Care | health |
| Education and Training | edu |
| Family Policies | family |
| Gender Aspects | gend |
| Topic | Abbreviation |
|---|---|
| Policy Legacies | polleg |
| Economic and Financial Factors | econnat |
| Political Factors | polnat |
| Social Structure | socstr |
| Culture | cult |
| Geography | geo |
| 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 of indicator names: Indicator names (and hence page titles) shall not be capitalized.
Name scheme for variable names: Technical variable names follow a common scheme. The first up to six characters indicate the topic followed by an underscore. Afterwards, each project is free to assign any meaningful variable name. Words must always be separated with an underscore. Example: natpol_elec_date (not natpol_elecdate!).
Style guidelines: For general guidelines please refer to Wikipedia's Manual of Style as well.
Citation
Citation style has not been fixed yet, but will be added very soon.
