FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions about NACDA

The National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging is a research storehouse of information and data on aging. NACDA is funded by the National Institute on Aging and is located at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research in Ann Arbor Michigan. NACDA exists to advance research on aging by helping researchers profit from the underexploited potential of a broad range of datasets. NACDA acquires and preserves data relevant to gerontological research, processing as needed to promote effective research use, disseminates them to researchers, and facilitates their use. By preserving and making available the U.S.'s largest library of electronic data on aging, NACDA offers opportunities for secondary analysis on major issues of scientific and policy relevance.

The mission of the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA) is to create a data infrastructure to stimulate gerontological research and advance gerontological knowledge. Through the development and delivery of research resources and data services, NACDA alerts researchers to opportunities for secondary data analysis, provides tools to locate and access relevant materials, and enhances the available gerontological database. NACDA also offers state-of-the-art training on theoretical issues and analytic techniques related to secondary data analysis. By promoting and facilitating the use of extant resources for research and teaching, NACDA plays a vital role in the replication of previous results and the discovery of new findings.

NACDA acquires and preserves datasets of scientific importance to the gerontological research community especially in the areas of international data, historical data, longitudinal data, data on minority aging, non-federal studies, and data that are otherwise not readily available. This requires that we encourage researchers to share and archive their data for use by the wider scientific community.

NACDA distributes data and documentation to researchers in a form that facilitates their use in an efficient and cost-effective manner. This involves data processing and the creation of data and documentation products that can be used more easily than the original versions. It also involves continued attention to new modes of data storage and transmission.

NACDA provides user support and technical services to facilitate secondary data analysis in gerontology. As an aspect of this goal, NACDA conducts workshops and related programs. We are also creating a comprehensive locator service for datasets distributed by their producers or other archives.

The core of the NACDA collection is available free of charge to everyone. This collection represents the largest single collection of data on aging and health in the United States and the collection is constantly growing. NACDA also links to a variety of other datasets within ICPSR that are related to aging and health issues, as well as related archival projects. While many of these datasets are freely available to the public, those which are privately held by ICPSR can be obtained through User Support at a minimal cost. If you have difficutly obtaining a dataset please contact NACDA Staff at nacda@icpsr.umich.edu for assistance.

One source of confusion among data users is due to the fact that NACDA maintains three types of active links to data on aging. Depending upon the type of data you select, you will encounter different levels of access:

Free Access: NACDA Public Use Data that can be downloaded by anyone at anytime from the NACDA Web site.

Limited Access: ICPSR Member Data represents aging data located within the broader ICPSR collection. These are datasets that NACDA feels are of interest to aging researchers but are freely accessible only to members of the ICPSR consortium. Access to these ICPSR collection files requires active membership with ICPSR. You can check the list of consortium members, or you can check with your local reference librarian.

If you are a member and your institution is participating in ICPSR Direct, then you can download the files without further assistance. (Please note that this will only work from campus computers, not from home computers.)
If you are a member and your institution is not participating in ICPSR Direct, then you will need to contact your local representative, who can obtain the dataset for you.
If you are not affiliated with a member institution, then you will need to contact ICPSR User Support (netmail@icpsr.umich.edu) to get information on purchasing the data.

Mixed Access: This pertains to aging data external to NACDA and ICPSR. These datasets represent collections of value to aging research that are not actively distributed by NACDA. Examples of these data include the HRS/AHEAD data and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Access to these datasets will depend upon the requirements of the data provider.

NACDA staff are available at by phone during normal business hours in the U.S. Eastern time zone. We can also be reached via email at nacda@icpsr.umich.edu.

NACDA distributes data principally through point and click downloads from our Web site. NACDA can provide data on other media such as CD-ROM. Special requests can be handled on an individual basis.

NACDA distributes special collections on CD-ROM. Typically, these collections represent compilations of ongoing studies of specific substantive topics.

NACDA is unique among other aging projects because it not only collects and distributes data on aging, it also provides expert user support to assist researchers in the conduct of secondary analysis. NACDA staff can provide assistance in the identification of appropriate datasets on specific topics, the analysis of these datasets, and the use of codebooks, and computer source code.