The Search Results page indicates that my search is "sorted by relevance." What does that mean?

Our search engine enables you to sort search results in several ways:

• Relevance: The search engine determines how closely a page matches your search terms. The most relevant studies will appear at the top of the list of search results. Sorting by relevance is not available for some searches.

• Released/Updated (newest) and Released/Updated (oldest): For studies, this date refers to the date on which ICPSR last updated the data, or began distributing the data, whichever is most recent.

• Title A-Z and Title Z-A: Searches are sometimes sorted by title, when all items are equally relevant and the date isn't especially useful.

• Time Period (newest) and Time Period (oldest): This refers to the date the study covers, and the sort looks at the last year in the time period (when the time period is a range or groups of ranges).

• Most Cited in the ICPSR Bib.: This is the count of citations that ICPSR has found that relate to the study.

• Most Downloaded: This is an indication of unique downloads over the last 90 days.

This FAQ was last reviewed on 2009-05-26. If you have further questions, or wish to report an error, please contact netmail@icpsr.umich.edu.