How to Search for Specific Variables

All PHDCN studies can be searched at the variable level. While the main ICPSR search engine searches titles, principal investigators, and study descriptions, the variable-level search capability also searches variable labels, value labels, and question text.

To perform a variable-level search across all publicly available PHDCN data collections, go to the Search and Data Access web page and select "Variable-Level Searching."

Enter a search term or terms in the search box and then click on the Search button. The example below searches for variables containing the word "knife."

If you choose to enter multiple search terms in the variable-level search box, do not use quotation marks because they will be interpreted literally. You also do not need to enter "or" or "and" in the search box, since these options will be presented to you later in the search process. Simply enter the search terms in the search box.

The first set of results lists all of the PHDCN data collections that contain the word "knife." From this results page you can choose to list matching variables, read the study descriptions, browse all variables in the dataset, or download the data collection.

To view the variables matching your search term in a particular data collection, select the "List matching variables" link under the data collection title.

The next search results page will list the variable name and variable label of each variable in that particular data collection that contains your search term.

When you click on a variable label, you will be taken to the online data analysis codebook for that study. This will provide you with the question text for the variable of interest as well as frequencies and some descriptive statistics.

If you are not sure which data set you would like to browse, you can also choose to list all of the variables with your search term in all data sets by selecting the "Find matching variables in all studies" link at the bottom of the search results page.

The results obtained from this search option can be rather long.

Once you have found variables of interest, you can use your web browser's "back" button to return to the list of studies where you can choose to browse all of the variables in the dataset or download the collection.