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Description & Citation--Study No. 3371

Bibliographic Description

ICPSR Study No.:3371
 
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03371
 
Title:Database of [United States] Congressional Historical Statistics, 1789-1989
 
Principal Investigator(s):Elaine K. Swift, Eastern Washington University
 
  Robert G. Brookshire, James Madison University
 
  David T. Canon, University of Wisconsin-Madison
 
  Evelyn C. Fink, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
 
  John R. Hibbing, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
 
  Brian D. Humes, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
 
  Michael J. Malbin, State University of New York-Albany
 
  Kenneth C. Martis, West Virginia University
 
Funding Agency:National Science Foundation
 
Grant Number:SES 9309877
 
  SES 93-10057
 
  SES 9223337
 
  SBR-93-18537
 
  SES 9308683
 
  SES 9319225
 
  SES-9109335
 
  SBR 9496324
 
  SBR-9310112
 
Bibliographic Citation:Swift, Elaine K., Robert G. Brookshire, David T. Canon, Evelyn C. Fink, John R. Hibbing, Brian D. Humes, Michael J. Malbin, and Kenneth C. Martis. Database of [United States] Congressional Historical Statistics, 1789-1989 [Computer file]. ICPSR03371-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2009-02-03. doi:10.3886/ICPSR03371
 

Scope of Study

Summary:This data release is composed of tables from a database of United States Congressional statistics spanning the time period 1789 through 1989. The sources of the data were studies in the ICPSR collection and other historical texts and studies. There are eleven data files in total, including two additional tables that have been added since the first release. Some files contain records for additional Congresses. The rows in the various files describe different entities. For example, in the Votes Table file, each row contains a record of a vote by a particular member on a particular roll call vote. The Member Table file contains a record for each member of Congress, while the Serves Table file contains a record for each member for every Congress in which he or she served. See the descriptions of each file in the codebook for details about its contents. The data from the various files can be combined by matching the fields that they have in common. Cross-file searches should be conducted using the Member_ID field. However, not every file has the Member_ID field. In those cases, an alternative common field should be used.
 
Subject Term(s):biographical data, career history, congressional candidates, congressional districts, congressional elections (US House), congressional elections (US Senate), congressional voting, historical data, legislative bodies, legislators, political history, political leaders, politicians, public officials, roll call data, roll call voting records, United States Congress, United States House of Representatives, United States Senate, vote count, voting behavior
 
Geographic Coverage:United States
 
Time Period:1789 - 1989
 
Date(s) of Collection:March 2001
 
Data Type:census/enumeration data
 
  roll call voting data
 
  survey data
 
Data Collection Notes:This data has been reviewed and processed by ICPSR staff. In cases where errors could be determined, they were corrected. In some instances, an error was found but no corrective solution was possible.
 
  During processing some variable names were truncated to eight characters. In those cases, efforts were made to make the variable names as similar to the original name as possible. The variable labels were not changed to ensure agreement between the statistical files and the codebook.
 

Methodology

Data Source:United States Congressional Record
 
Mode of Data Collection:record abstracts
 

Access and Availability

Note:A list of the data formats available for this study can be found in the summary of holdings. Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.
 
Original ICPSR Release:2004-12-08
 
Version History:The last update of this study occurred on 2009-02-03.
 
  2009-02-03 - Parts 10 (Committee Table) and 11 (Roll Call Table) have been added to this release. In addition, all parts of this study now have SAS, SPSS, and Stata setup and ready-to-go files.
 
  2006-01-18 - File CB3371.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.
 
Dataset(s):
  • DS1: Election Table
  • DS2: Issue Table
  • DS3: Member Table
  • DS4: Party Table
  • DS5: Roll Call Text (RCText) Table
  • DS6: Request Table
  • DS7: Roll Call Requests (Rollreq) Table
  • DS8: Serves Table
  • DS9: Votes Table
  • DS10: Committee Table
  • DS11: Roll Call Table
 

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