Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery

About ICPSR

What is ICPSR?

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is an organization of member institutions working together to acquire and preserve social science data, to provide open and equitable access to these data, and to promote effective data use. ICPSR promotes and facilitates research and instruction in the social sciences and related areas by acquiring, developing, archiving, and disseminating data and documentation for instruction and research and by conducting related instructional programs.

The Data Archive

The ICPSR archive receives, processes, and distributes computer readable and print data on social phenomena occurring in over 130 countries. UMBC has some data sets in paper, some on CD-ROM, and provides access to computer-readable data sets.

The archive is indexed both in paper and on the web.

History and More Information

1. An Overview of ICPSR

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) was established in 1962 to serve social scientists around the world by providing a central repository and dissemination service for computer-readable social science data, training facilities in basic and advanced techniques of quantitative social analysis, and resources that facilitate the use of advanced computer technology by social scientists. Headquarters and central staff are located in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, where ICPSR maintains the world's largest archive of computer-based research and instructional data for the social sciences. ICPSR provides facilities and services for an international community of scholars that no one college or university could offer independently.

Founded originally as a partnership between the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan and 21 universities in the United States, the Consortium now includes among its members more than 325 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada and several hundred additional institutions served by national memberships in Europe, Oceania, Asia, and Latin America. Scholars are able to share common data resources, to interact and study together in the ICPSR training programs, and to utilize a common set of technical aids.

ICPSR member institutions pay annual dues that entitle faculty, staff, and students to acquire the full range of services provided by ICPSR. A Council, composed of leading scholars from many areas of social inquiry, is elected by the membership to oversee the administration and organizational policies of ICPSR. Through this unique structure of institutional affiliation governed and guided by scholars themselves, ICPSR stands as a proven example of the benefits derived from scientific cooperation and partnership.

The ICPSR data holdings cover a broad range of disciplines, including political science, sociology, demography, economics, history, education, gerontology, criminal justice, public health, foreign policy, and law. ICPSR encourages social scientists in all fields to contribute to and utilize ICPSR's data resources. Subject areas in the ICPSR Data Archive include the following:

1. Census Enumerations
2. Community, Urban Studies
3. Conflict, Aggression, Violence
4. Economic Behavior, Attitudes
5. Education
6. Elites and Leadership
7. Geography and Environment
8. Government Structures, Policies
9. Health Care, Facilities
10. Instructional Packages
11. International Systems
12. Legal Systems
13. Legislative, Deliberative Bodies
14. Mass Political Behavior, Attitudes
15. Organizational Behavior
16. Social Indicators
17. Social Institutions, Behavior
18. Publication-Related Archive

ICPSR is also home to several externally-funded archives, each of which is organized around specific topics. Funded by outside sources, these archives identify, accession, process, and release data focusing on machine-readable collections in their respective areas. These special archives include:

• National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging
• National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
• Health and Medical Care Archive
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive
• International Archive of Education Data

All data collected, processed, and released by the topical archives are available to ICPSR members under normal ICPSR policies.

With the rapid growth of electronic communication, much of the informational flow between ICPSR and its members originally done via published documents and announcements is now handled through the ICPSR website and email. Accordingly, publication of the annual catalog of information, the Guide to Resources and Services, was discontinued in September 1997. Information about ICPSR holdings and services can now be accessed through ICPSR's website on the World-Wide Web at:
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu.

Aside from providing access to ICPSR's vast machine-readable data archives, the website also provides organizational information as well as links to other resources. From the "contents" section of the homepage, the user can access general information about ICPSR, membership information, the Constitution and Bylaws of the ICPSR, and reports on recent Council activities. Information about the Archive includes announcements of new data releases and recent updates to existing collections. Further information about each data collection can be found in the full-text searchable versions of the data collection abstracts. As new collections are released and existing collections are updated, the abstracts are added and updated to reflect the changes. Consequently, users always have access to the most recent information about any of the data holdings in the Archive. Also available from the website are special announcements, Summer Program information, and links to other sites of interest.

2. UMBC's Membership in ICPSR

A few changes have taken place this year at UMBC. Katy Sullivan has taken over as the ICPSR Official Representative, and UMBC has chosen to participate in the ICPSR direct program. providing direct access to the ICPSR data holdings for all students, faculty, and staff at ICPSR member institutions. ICPSR Direct represents a quantum leap in data distribution at ICPSR. With ICPSR Direct, any user with an authorized IP address from a member institution may download data from ICPSR, without going through a local campus representative.

Please include contact information when ordering ICPSR studies. Codebooks are sent to the Library, and become part of its collection. Your ICPSR Representative will contact you when the codebook for your study arrives ONLY if you supply sufficient information, i.e., a name or email address, when requesting the study.

UMBC Home Page => Library & Computing => AOK Library & Gallery => General Reference => Statistics => ICPSR

Type ICPSR in the 'Databases' Quick Search box on the Library Homepage (www.umbc.edu/library)

Go directly to http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/reference/icpsr/

From this page, you can find not only an index listing the data sets on CD-ROMs physically located at UMBC but also a guide to the entire ICPSR data archive that can be searched or browsed at leisure . (The latter can also be reached directly from the ICPSR Homepage given in the previous section.) Each listing includes a study description and also technical information, such as the availability of machine-readable or hard-copy documentation, available file formats (e.g., SPSS export file, etc.), the size of the files, and alternative distribution media (i.e., CD-ROM, diskette, etc.) where available. Data files and some documentation can be downloaded directly by individual researchers.

For an annual personal fee of $100 (plus a one-time $25 setup charge), an individual at a member institution can receive an ICPSR password that will allow him or her to download ICPSR data directly for personal research or instructional use (bypassing the OR). For $500, a department, institute, or center can do the same. Papers, dissertations, and publications based on data acquired through ICPSR should properly acknowledge this fact.

ICPSR monographs, announcements, bulletins, certain documents (including the final hard-copy edition of ICPSR's Guide to Resources and Services), and CD-ROMS are available in the Library. Most of this material has been cataloged and is at least partially searchable via catalogusmai . Though this material is in the Reference Room, it can circulate with a period of two weeks. Please note that ICPSR documents (e.g., codebooks) that UMBC researchers acquire for free through UMBC's institutional membership belong to the library and ultimately become part of its collection.

We are happy to report that total UMBC requests increased from five data sets in 1996-97 to 22 sets in 1997-98. Additionally, in the two months since UMBC began participating in ICPSR (August-September, 2001), 11 data sets have been requested. At that rate I expect that we should download over 50 data sets this fiscal year.

Even so, UMCP requests run well over a thousand data sets a year--a figure typical of large (and even not so large) research universities. We cannot help but believe that there is a resource here that could be used to great advantage by many more UMBC social science researchers.

If you would like more information about ICPSR at UMBC, or are interested in having me talk to your classes, please contact me at: (410) 455-3604 or sullivan@umbc.edu.