ICPSR, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, is a unit within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan that consists of some 740 member colleges, universities, and other research institutions world-wide. ICPSR maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction (over 8,000 discrete studies/surveys with more than 65,000 datasets). As a member of (ICPSR) UA students, faculty, and staff have access to ICPSR's data archive, which includes more than 500,000 files of research in the social sciences.
Like all resources, datasets should be cited whenever they are used in a publication, paper, presentation, or assignment. Here are some guides to citing data:
Although ICPSR is a complex database, there are numerous Video Tutorials and a list of Frequently Asked Questions to help you get started. There is also a searchable video tutorial archive for more advanced questions. If you take the time to learn from these tutorials, you should be able to navigate the database.
Starting with the Find Data portal, search by keyword or browse by topic. Before you download datasets, you must read and agree to the terms of use.
All datasets are accompanied by codebooks and other supporting documentation. Review these carefully to ensure proper interpretation of the data.
ICPRS can also be searched through the Harvard University IQSS (Institute for Quantitative Social Science Dataverse platform.
UA students and faculty can use the Virtual Lab to access SPSS 21, SAS 9.3 with Enterprise Miner, SAS JMP Pro 10, and MiniTab 16.
Whether you are using SAS, SPSS, MiniTab, Stata, R, or another system to analyze data, there are resources available to help you get started.
Some ICPSR datasets can now be viewed instantly using SDA: Survey Documentation and Analysis. An excellent introduction to using SDA is available from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive (SAMHDA), and a full video webinar (with a demonstration starting at 12:55) is available from ICPSR.
Use the data search filters to create a list of all ICPSR datasets available in SDA.