ICPSR

Go Directly to ICPSR Archives

View or Download the Tips for Searching ICPSR (PPT file)

• Contacts for Further Assistance

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), head quartered at the University of Michigan, is a membership-based organization providing access to one of the world's largest archives of research and instructional data in the social sciences. Member institutions (including Johns Hopkins University) pay an annual membership fee which entitles faculty, staff, and students access to ICPSR's wide range of data and services. JHU Faculty, students and staff may now download data directly from ICPSR through the ICPSR Direct Service.

In addition, JHU's Official Representative (OR) to ICPSR can assist you with obtaining data and codebooks. The ICPSR Representative acts as the primary contact person for communication between the member institution and the ICPSR staff. If you are unable to download your own data, the OR can obtain the data for you through the Assisted Data on Demand Service.

About the datasets
 
ICPSR datasets are usually large ASCII files of raw data - rows of numbers. The user must work with the codebook/documentation to read and interpret the data. Users will also need to use a statistical package such as SAS, SPSS or Stata to read in the data. It is helpful to be familiar with uncompressing data and ftp. Assistance is available if you have determined that you need to work with this type of data file.

ICPSR Direct
 
Hopkins faculty, staff and students can take advantage of ICPSR's newest program - ICPSR Direct. With ICPSR Direct, any user with an authorized JHU IP address may download data from ICPSR, to their local workstation.

Any one on campus will be able to download data. Off-campus JHU users should see information on remote access to University Libraries.

Once at the ICPSR website, simply search the ICPSR archives for your study, enter you correct email address at the authorized download page. You may be asked to provide contact information before downloading your data.

Please report any problems to Sharon Morris or the staff of the Government Publications/Maps/Law Library.

Assisted Data on Demand Service

You must be a current JHU faculty member, student or staff to use this service!

When to use this service: 
Users are encouraged to directly download their own ICPSR data. However, if you don't have enough space on your workstation, or the download takes too long, or you just prefer some assistance, then the Assisted Data on Demand Service is for you.

Obtaining data through this service is a simple process. Complete this order form or contact Sharon Morris at smorris@jhu.edu or 410-516-8360.

Things to know about data on demand service:

• You will receive acknowledgment of your request for data.
• Once the acknowledgment is received, data is generally available within a few hours. The data will either be available for you to ftp from a JHU server (we provide you with step by step instructions) or we can put large data sets on cd-rom.
• Use the order form to indicate your overall  familiarity with ftp, uncompressing data, working with codebooks, etc.
• You cannot redistribute data obtained through this program. The data is for your use to support your research.

Identifying & Locating Datasets
 
As members of ICPSR, we have access to all the data in the ICPSR archives. You may download data directly or ask for assistance from the official representative.
 
In addition, JHU has some ICPSR data available on CD-Rom's that can be loaned to JHU researchers. Check the MSEL On-line catalog for our CD-Rom's.
 
Note: Homewood Academic Computing no longer has ICPSR data available on tape. Data that used to be on tape will be reordered by the Official Representative and put on CD-Rom for your use.
 
Identify the desired data, using one of the methods listed below.

• The ICPSR Archives, Specialized Archives and Important ICPSR Datasets Free on the Web
  Tips for searching ICPSR site (PPT File)
• MSEL On-line Catalog - For Codebooks & CD-Rom's

The ICPSR Archives and ICPSR Specialized Archives

To identify datasets that may be of interest, go to the ICPSR Archives.  At this website, ICPSR studies may be browsed by categories or the site searched by Subject, Title, Principal Investigator, keyword or study Number. You can also browse the newly released and updated data collections.

At the ICPSR site, follow the links for your study to download the data or after locating your study, use the Assisted data on demand service.

In addition, ICPSR maintains several topic centered archives. The data from these archives can be found in the general archives as well, but the topic centered pages bring the data together and offer tips and sometimes data analysis tools. The topic centered archives are:

• National Archive on Computerized Data on Aging
• National Archive of Criminal Justice data
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data
• International Archive of Educational Data

Several large studies receive special treatment and are searchable via the web:

• General Social Survey Homepage -
  The GSS (General Social Survey) is an almost annual "omnibus," personal interview survey of U.S. households conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). The first   survey took place in 1972 and since then more than 35,000 respondents have answered over 2500 different questions. If you are ready to extract data, two different ways are provided to extract data from GSS 1972-to date via ICPSR and GSS 1972-to date via SDA Archives University of California, Berkeley  
• American National Election Study also know as NES (National Election Studies)
  • NES via University of Michigan - NES site at Michigan contains serveral historical tables and graphs of the more popular variables
  • NES via SDA Archives University of California, Berkeley
• Panel Study of Income Dynamics
• Survey of Income and Program Participation - U.S. Census Bureau - extract SIPP data via the Census Ferret System.

Ready to Search the On-line Catalog

The MSE Library also provides information about data files for which we have printed codebooks and about datafiles that are available on CD-Rom. If a catalog record mentions Homewood Academic Computing, contact the ICPSR Representative.
 
To find ICPSR printed codebooks and ICPSR data on CD-Rom available at JHU, follow these procedures:

1. Search the Horizon catalog using the title of the study, or use as keywords, ICPSR study number.
    
    Example 1: ICPSR printed codebook
   • Keyword Title Search:Occupational Changes In a  Generation, 1962 and 1973 or keyword search ICPSR 6162
   • The resulting record indicates that the codebook is in the Eisenhower Library, Government Publications ICPSR Codebook Collection and the electronic data should be requested via our data on demand service.

Location	Call#	Note
Eisenhower Government Publication - ICPSR Codebook Collection	HD5717.5.U62 032 1994 ICPSR 6162 codebook
	Shelving	Status	Copy	DateDue	Call #
	Eisenhower Government Publications - ICPSR Codebook Collection	In Process	c.1		HD5717.5.U62 032 1994 ICPSR 6162 codebook
Eisenhower Government Publications - ICPSR FTP File	ICPSR 6162	Data on Demand
	Shelving	Status	Copy	DateDue	Call #
	Eisenhower Government Publications - ICPSR FTP File	Request at GovPubs	c. 1		ICPSR 6162

Example 2: ICPSR data and Codebook on CD-Rom

• keyword Title search: Medical Expenditure Survey or keyword search ICPSR 6649 

The resulting record indicates that the CD-Rom is shelved in Government Publications

Location	Call #	Note
Eisenhower Government Publications- CD-Rom	ICPSR 6649(PCD96001)
	Shelving	Status	Copy	Date Due	Call #
					Shelving

• The Official ICPSR Representative is Sharon Morris or 410-516-8360. You can also check with the staff in the Government Publications/Maps/Law Library on A-Level in Eisenhower Library from 8:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. M-F for assistance with general information about ICPSR data. 410-516-8360.
• Form for contacting Sharon Morris and ordering ICPSR data
• Some assistance working with codebooks, sub setting data or using Statistical packages to read and analyze the data is available by appointment with Sharon Morrisand Vijay MohanaSundaraNeru.