New User Tutorial

What You Will Get From the ICPSR Archive

Most of the datasets in the ICPSR archive are raw data from surveys, censuses, and administrative records. They were originally gathered in research projects and for administrative purposes. ICPSR preserves them because they have value for "secondary analysis" - that is, reexamining old data to address new questions or to employ new analytic methods.

You will not get reports, charts, publications, or other studies from ICPSR. Rather, you will get raw numerical data which can be analyzed. Some datasets have been used in published studies. You can see a bibliography of these studies by clicking on the "view related literature" link on each study's home page.

Finding the Data You Need

Use the Search Box if you know exactly what you want. For example, enter a survey title or the name of a principal investigator in the search box. We also offer several browse options, including:

ICPSR makes use of faceted searching. You may find it helpful to read over a brief post on Faceted Searching Using SOLR.

Additional Finding Aids

Find Publications using our Bibliography of Data-Related Literature. This database contains over 60,000 published and unpublished works that have used data in the ICPSR collection. It is an excellent way to explore what has already been done in an area of study.

Seach and Compare Variables within our Social Science Variables Database (SSVD). The SSVD currently represents about 50% of ICPSR's overall holdings, or roughly 1.9 million variables.

Terminology

In your searching you may encounter unfamiliar acronyms and specialized terms used in the social sciences. These resources can provide clear definitions:

Obtaining Access to the Data

Documentation

All of the documentation files associated with ICPSR datasets are available to the general public. This documentation includes the study metadata--that is, the data describing the study. However, not all of the datasets themselves are freely available.

Data for ICPSR members

Some ICPSR data have been acquired, processed, and archived through the support of ICPSR member institutions. These data are available only to persons at ICPSR member institutions. If you are at a member institution, you will be able to download these datasets; if you are not, you may only download documentation files for that study. An Access Note will appear on the study home page informing you if the data are available only to ICPSR members.

Freely Available Data

Studies funded by federal agencies are usually available to the general public (unless restricted because of disclosure risk). These externally-funded thematic collections focus on aging, child care, criminal justice, demographic information, education, health and mental health, substance abuse, and terrorism.

Restricted Data

Some datasets are protected because there is a risk that the identity of research participants could be disclosed. These datasets are released with special protections. Datasets in which the level of disclosure risk is especially high can be examined only in a special data enclave in the ICPSR office in Ann Arbor. See enclave data.

If you find a dataset with restricted access, you will see an Access Note about this on the study home page:

example of a study home page with a restriction note
example of a study with a restricted access note

Downloading Data

When you find a study that you wish to download, you will see a variety of download links on the study home page that enable you to download individual documentation files, or application-specific bundles (at either the study or dataset level). The "Quick Download" button provides multiple options on mouse over.

Before downloading the data, you may want to do two things to assure that the study meets your needs.

  • Review the description of the study. This may include important information about file formats and other unique characteristics of the data.

  • View the documentation files, including the codebook.

Note that in downloading data from ICPSR, you signify that you agree not to share the data with anyone not authorized by ICPSR to receive it. You further agree to the terms of use.

Analyzing Data

Using the downloaded data requires some basic knowledge of statistical analysis techniques and some familiarity with statistical analysis software packages. We provide help for specific analysis packages and data analysis issues.

Found a problem? Use our Report Problem form to let us know.

ICPSR is part of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.