Description & Citation--Study No. 7803

• Bibliographic Description
• Scope of Study
• Methodology
• Access and Availability

Bibliographic Description

07803

Roster of United States Congressional Officeholders and Biographical Characteristics of Members of the United States Congress, 1789-1996: Merged Data

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research

McKibbin, Carroll

Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, and Carroll McKibbin. Roster of United States Congressional Officeholders and Biographical Characteristics of Members of the United States Congress, 1789-1996: Merged Data. ICPSR07803-v10. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1997. doi:10.3886/ICPSR07803.v10

United States Congressional Biographical Data Series

Scope of Study

This dataset contains variables describing congressional service and selected biographical characteristics for each person who has served in the United States Congress. This release of the data includes members of the 104th Congress. Approximately 11,455 individuals are represented in this file, each identified by a unique five-digit identification number. A data record exists for every Congress in which an individual served, as well as for each chamber in which a person may have served in a given Congress. To illustrate, a member of the House of Representatives who is appointed to fill a vacancy in the Senate during a term of service will have two data records for that Congress. The congressional service variables include political party affiliation, district, state and region represented, and exact and cumulative dates of service in each Congress and each chamber, as well as total congressional service. The biographical variables cover state and region of birth, education, military service, occupation, other political offices held, relatives who also have held congressional office, reason for leaving each Congress, and occupation and political offices held subsequent to service in Congress. Many of these specific variables are summarized in a collapsed variable.

biographical data, career history, eighteenth century, historical data, legislative bodies, legislators, nineteenth century, political elites, public officials, twentieth century, United States Congress, United States House of Representatives, United States Senate

United States

• 1789-03-04--1996-11-27

All persons who have served in the United States Congress from 1789 to November 27, 1996.

biographical data

(1) This dataset was originally constructed from two separate datasets, the ROSTER OF UNITED STATES CONGRESSIONAL OFFICEHOLDERS, 1789-1978, collected by ICPSR, and Carroll McKibbin's BIOGRAPHICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MEMBERS OF THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS, 1789-1978. Since 1979, the Consortium staff has prepared and maintained the combined file. (2) The codebook is provided as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided [in the README file on the diskette version of this study and] through the ICPSR Website on the Internet.

Methodology

(1) BIOGRAPHICAL DIRECTORY OF THE AMERICAN CONGRESS, 1774-1989, (2) CONGRESSIONAL DIRECTORY, 1969-1988, (3) WEEKLY REPORT, 1979-1989, (4) Carroll McKibbin. BIOGRAPHICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MEMBERS OF THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS, 1789-1979 (ICPSR 7428), (5) Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. UNITED STATES HISTORICAL ELECTION RETURNS, 1788-1984 (ICPSR 0001), (6) CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY WEEKLY REPORT, various issues

All archived data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. The archive also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, the archive performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

• Standardized missing values.
• Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
• Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Access and Availability

Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.

1984-07-06

• 1997-07-29 Data for the period June 16, 1993, through November 27, 1996, have been added to the collection, and the machine-readable documentation is now available as a PDF file.