The DDI Matures: 1997 to the Present

The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) began in 1995 with a small international group coming together with a focus on social science metadata. The group moved quickly to develop a first specification, around which a community of practice emerged. That community, along with the DDI specification itself, has evolved over the last two decades to reflect developments in the social sciences, technological advances, and innovation in research practice. This paper chronicles the history of the DDI from its instantiation in XML in 1997 to its current status as the de facto standard for documenting data in the social and behavioral sciences.