What is ICPSR?
Who can access the data?
How do I search for data in ICPSC
How do I download data from ICPSR?
What if I need more help?
The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is the world's largest archive of computer readable social science data. ICPSR provides Web access to data files and documentation for use with statistical software, such as SAS, SPSS, and Stata.
The ICPSR data holdings contain some 6,300 studies and 500,000 files that cover a wide range of social science areas such as population, economics, education, health, social and political behavior, social and political attitudes, history, crime, aging, and substance abuse.
UT Austin is an ICPSR member institution. Students, faculty and staff have direct access to most data available at ICPSR.
In order to be recognized as a UT Austin user from off campus, you must use the proxied link to the ICPSR:
http://ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/login?url=http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/.
Users must create a MyData account and agree to abide by the terms of a responsible use statement.
Some data sets in the topical archives are federally funded and available to anyone. Documentation for all studies is feely available to all.
How do I search for data in ICPSR?
Search for data using ICPSR's catalog or advanced search interface. You can also browse data by subject, browse the Special Topics Archives, and search the Bibliography of Data-Related Literature. Improve search results by using the ICPSR Thesaurus. The MyData update notification service informs you when studies are updated.
How do I download data from ICPSR?
UT Austin students, faculty and staff may download data directly from ICPSR while on campus. First time users must create a My Data account to access data. The majority of data files come with SAS, SPSS and Stata setup files which enable you to read data into these statistical software packages.
In a step by step process, users chose the data format they want, select from available files, and add data to a cart for download. All files are downloaded as zipped files and must be uncompressed on your machine. Additionally setup files must be edited to point to the full path name of the downloaded file.
See ICPSR's Data Use Tutorial for step by step instructions.
ICPSR's Data Use Tutorial offers a quick overview of searching and accessing ICPSR data.
Additional Help Documentation is available as a FAQ database.
You may also contact the ITS Research Consulting for questions about research design, statistical analyses, data manipulation, visualizing mathematical results, and selecting and using mathematical and statistical software.
