About RCMD

RCMD is a recent initiative of ICPSR. The changing demographic composition has expanded the scope of the U.S. racial and ethnic mosaic. As a result, interest and research on race and ethnicity has become more complex and expansive. Initially, ICPSR tapped its archives to assemble existing data files that focused upon communities of color. Since the late 1990’s, there has been a marked increase in studies and projects on more minorities communities and exploring a wider range of experiences and relationships.

RCMD seeks to assist in the public dissemination and preservation of quality data to generate more “good science” for years to come. Finally, RCMD wants to be part of an interactive community of persons interested and be involved in minority related issues/investigations in order to make possible the broadest scope of research endeavors and examinations.

The mission for the Resource Center for Minority Data (RCMD) is to provide educators, researchers, and students with data resources so that they can produce analysis of issues affecting racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States.

RCMD provides access and analytic tools enhancements to use of the vast array of available data. The archive collection allows researchers to track changes in outcomes and status of minority populations and contributing factors.

For researchers:

  • Archive includes housing, health, education, crime, income and wealth, youth behavior, and politics files.
  • Ethnic/racial over-sampling, and large sample sizes permits opportunities for extensive analysis of issues affecting racial/ethnic minority communities.
  • Large on-going national surveys and administrative records, and studies by researcher(s) conducted on different racial/ethnic groups and at different levels of geography.

For instructors:

  • Provides learning tools for use by instructors to improve their students’ knowledge of this field with empirical applications.
  • Additional instructional modules will be added for classroom use.

For Students:

  • Can benefit from access to data for analysis in papers, reports, and dissertations.
  • Use of research tools component on how to recode data and download extracts or subsamples from major national studies.