Frequently Asked Questions about Membership
Quotes From Members
"ICPSR does a fabulous job connecting us with the rich data resources that are available to our researchers."
"In the nine years since we became a member, it has been a constant progression of improvements in data content, data quality, methods of discovery, and delivery of data, and the list goes on."
Membership
Approximately 700 universities, government agencies, and other institutions are members of ICPSR.
Faculty, staff, and students of member institutions have full direct access to the data archive and to
all of ICPSR's services. They also receive discounted tuition rates for courses in ICPSR's
Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social
Research 
.
While most memberships involve individual institutions, groups of institutions can also join collectively as a federation and receive federation membership fees.
More information about ICPSR is available, including publications and promotional materials.
Benefits of Membership
For All Data Users
Everyone affiliated with a member institution receives full access to the data archive of more than 7,500 research studies. In addition, ICPSR data users get:
Convenience: powerful search tools, useful metadata, easy access, and curation services all in one place.
Data enhancements, including SAS, SPSS and Stata files to facilitate analysis.
Online analysis tools for hundreds of studies.
Technical help in using data.
Teaching tools featuring ICPSR's Online Learning Center
that
provides dozens of online data-driven learning guides to enhance the teaching of
core concepts in the social sciences.
For Researchers
Researchers using ICPSR data and services will appreciate the benefits of a professionally managed data archive.
Data enhancement. Data managers review and enhance data and technical documentation to make them optimally usable and compliant with disclosure limitation standards.
Long-term preservation. ICPSR provides for the long-term physical security of data. We work to meet the challenge of changing technologies to ensure the long-term usability of data.
Protection of confidentiality. ICPSR removes identifiers and observes standards of practice that protect the confidentiality of research participants. ICPSR safeguards sensitive data through varying levels of access, including restricted-use data and a secure data enclave.
Usage information. ICPSR keeps track of how often datasets are downloaded or accessed.
Reviewing the social science literature. Researchers can explore the Bibliography of Data-Related Literature that links ICPSR studies with thousands of publications in the professional literature.
Scientific norms. ICPSR makes possible the crucial work of replication, verification, extension of findings, and reuse of data that is at the heart of research in the social sciences.
