IASSIST 2003 Changes in the Way Data Archives Process Data Data Processing at ICPSR Darrell Donakowski

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research "Decades of archiving and providing worldwide research data in the social sciences."

Two Kinds of Archival Holdings: General Archive Holdings are funded with member dues and are available only to members Special Topic Archives are supported by foundations or federal agencies and are available to all

Processing data at ICPSR Initial steps include: Checking the congruence of data and related documentation (does the data provided match the documentation provided) Checking for wild codes and inconsistencies Harmonizing the data and documentation files (does the location of the data as identified in the documentation, actually match its location in the data file.) Converting technical documentation to PDF files.

Processing data at ICPSR Recent steps When provided, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata files are also released Stata files are made available, when requested Conversion of data files made easier with StatTransfer

Processing data at ICPSR Confidentiality Confidentiality review of all contents of the data collection Disclosure analysis Public Use version vs. Restricted Use version of data

Restricted Use Data Several dozen data collections No copy is stored online or on a file server connected to any network Secure Data Enclave Restricted Use Agreement For general information, please go to:

Access to Data and Documentation: DAS at ICPSR

Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA) SDA Developers: University of California at Berkeley, Computer-assisted Survey Methods Program (CSM) Why SDA? Developed for use with survey data on the World Wide Web Cohesive set of programs that are intuitive and easy to use Eliminates need for downloading for some purposes (to view variables and/or run analyses) Allows for creation of customized sub-sets Data Analysis System Overview

SDA Capabilities Frequencies and cross tabs Comparison of means Correlations/Comparison of correlations Multiple regression Compute new variables Download user-specified subset of records and/or variables Online documentation Data Analysis System Overview

Some ICPSR studies available in SDA format: American Citizen Participation Study, 1990 Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of American Youth, 2001 Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, (Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, and Los Angeles) National Crime Victimization Survey, National Household Surveys on Drug Abuse, National Survey of Adolescents in the United States, 1995 SETUPS: Voting Behavior: The 2000 Election

Additional Processing Considerations ICPSR Direct Finding Aids Improved Search Engine Bibliographic database of citations Social Science Thesaurus

ICPSR Direct 24/7 Direct Access at Member Institutions Over 250 members already set up, (71% of individual member schools)

Bibliography of Data-Related Literature 28,000+ citations to published and unpublished research literature Links to ICPSR data collections used in the research Simple Search/Browse by collection, author, publication, or journal

The Future of Processing Process review New formats for data and documentation Continued improvements in documentation

For more information, visit the ICPSR Web site: