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Making it easier to work the Fragile Families metadata in R and Python

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One thing we noticed during the Fragile Families Challenge is that some participants struggled to work with the data and metadata. So, after the Challenge ended, we used what we learned to rebuild the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study data and metadata, making it easier to use. This process is described in more detail in our paper: “Improving metadata infrastructure for complex surveys: 
Insights from the Fragile Families Challenge.” Now we are happy to announce the release of an R package (ffmetadata) and a Python package (ffmetadata-py) that make it easier to work with the Fragile Families metadata without leaving your data analysis environment.

Here’s an example of how you could install and use the R package:

And, here’s an example of how you could install and use the Python package:

Basically, both of these packages are convenient wrappers around the metadata API. You can read more about the design of the API in our paper “Improving metadata infrastructure for complex surveys: 
Insights from the Fragile Families Challenge.”

The R package was written by Ryan Vinh, with assistance from Ian Fellows and Will Lowe. The Python package was written by Vineet Bansal. The code for both packages is available open source:

About Matt Salganik

Matthew Salganik is a Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. He is also the author of Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age (http://www.bitbybitbook.com). You can learn more about his research at http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3.

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