How to Codebook

Felix Schönbrodt

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

2026-04-17

See the D-Psy-FAIR standard (developed by Blask et al from the Leibniz-Institute Psychology)

Save in a human-readable (e.g., .csv) and in a machine-readable (e.g., .json) format!

Excel file:
Human-readable: ✅ ✅
Machine-readabe: ~
Accessible: 👎

csv file:
Human-readable: ~ (raw) ✅ (after import)
Machine-readable: ✅
Accessible: ✅

json file:
Human-readable: ~ (raw)
Machine-readable: ✅ ✅
Accessible: ✅

Excursus: json file format

Step 1: Create your codebook as a csv file
– e.g., create it in Excel first, then export as .csv file
Step 2: Import into R and convert it to a json file

library(jsonlite)
df <- read.csv("codebook.csv")
json <- toJSON(df, pretty = TRUE)
write_json(json,"codebook.json")

Resources:
Video (51 min.): “PTOS 9: Einführung in das Forschungsdatenmanagement mit D-Psy_FAIR“
– siehe v.a.: „Schritt 2: Ein Codebuch erstellen“ ab 29:27