Teaching & Learning

The Online Learning Center offers Data-Driven Learning Guides that supplement undergraduate social science coursework with learning exercises using actual ICPSR data. They cover 50 subject areas in political science, sociology, and social psychology. They can be completed by the student or used for classroom demonstrations.

This portal provides access to resources to help faculty incorporate quantitative literacy into social science classes.

The ICPSR Undergraduate Research Paper Competition provides awards for papers based on analysis of data taken from one of the ICPSR archives.

The ICPSR summer internship program provides undergraduate students with a unique and expansive research experience that introduces all aspects of social science research and includes supported exploration of a research query from start to finish, data management training, and focused methodological education in quantitative research. This prepares interns for capstone or senior thesis projects, graduate school, and/or research-based employment opportunities. The students, under the supervision of faculty mentors, develop a research question, perform a literature search and review, complete data analysis, and report findings in a poster; learn good data management processes and research practices with a research process mentor; and attend classes at the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods. Additionally, regularly planned luncheon meetings focus on research projects within ICPSR/ISR, ethics in research and data management, and life in graduate school or in a research career obtainable with a Bachelor's degree in the social sciences. In the last week of the internship, the students display their work in a poster session for all faculty and staff. They leave ICPSR with a poster and abstract suitable for submission into a local/regional social science professional organization meeting of their choosing.

• Flyer (PDF 450K)

More information about the internship.

ICPSR has also prepared a list of links to external Web sites that provide quality information on undergraduate instruction.

The Summer Program provides training in research methodology. The program's breadth and the high quality of instruction have made it the preeminent forum for training in the tools of quantitative analysis. Instruction integrates hand-on data analysis with the theoretical and practical problems that arise in actual social science research.

The Summer Program takes place from early June to late August at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It centers around two four-week sessions. Many shorter three- and five-day courses are offered as well.

You can learn more about the Summer Program, or visit the Summer Program site .

The ICPSR Graduate Research Paper Competition provides awards for papers based on analysis of data taken from one of the ICPSR archives.

MyClass enables instructors to mass register students for temporary accounts such that they can download and manipulate data without going through the process of establishing permanent MyData accounts. The benefit is that MyClass enables you to focus very little classroom time on the registration process and proceed directly to working with data. After a period of time that you specify, the temporary accounts will cease to exist.

To create MyClass accounts, you must have a valid MyData account and your institution must be a member of ICPSR.

ICPSR conducts online webinars about using data in social science research. The recorded webinars and the accompanying PowerPoint presentations can be viewed or downloaded at the Data User Help Center.

The webinars cover a variety of topics including, finding what you want on the ICPSR Web site, analyzing ICPSR data onlinem, creating setup files for SPSS, debugging SAS, SPSS, and Stata code, etc.

The ICPSR Data Use Tutorial is a concise guide to finding, downloading, and importing data into statistical analysis software.