Featured Database - ICPSR Data Access and Analysis

Need datasets?
I plan to regularly post about a library database that may be useful for business research. Today's featured database is "ICPSR Data Access and Analysis." I briefly demonstrated this database recently for students in Business Statistics II.

To locate this database from the USF Libraries main page, select "Databases by title/subject" and type in ICPSR. When you click on the link, the database will open in a new window. This is a subscription database to which we have access because USF is a member institution of "ICPSR" - the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.

To begin, I recommend you read through the brief "Data Use Tutorial". It will explain some important features of the database. For example, you will need to do a quick, one-time registration in order to view or download any data.

You then have two primary options for locating datasets -- search or browse. Scroll down to "Browse", "Data by Subject" for a list of subject categories. Try Education / United States -- and you should receive a set of about 351 datasets. The datasets are sorted by title but you may want to change the sort option to date or relevance. For each dataset title, there is a link to a "description" of the data, a "download" feature, and "related literature". (Some will also offer "online analysis").

"Description" includes the scope of the data, methodology, and subject keywords. "Download" options include SAS, SPSS, or ASCII formats. Most of the files will be zipped. (Be aware that some of these files are huge!). "Related literature" is a nifty little feature that will take you to a few studies or reports that have used the specific dataset.

You can also search by keyword -- try fishing, camping, abortion..... and see what datasets might be available for those subjects.

In addition to ICPSR, a few other resources for locating datasets (and/or statistics) include:
1) From my list of web sites on del.icio.us (selecting the tag "statistics")
http://del.icio.us/marcylibrarian/statistics

2) From the Business Reference portion of the USFSP web site:
for general information on statistics and data sources: http://www.nelson.usf.edu/reference/subject_guides/business/statistics_data.html

3) OR, for the Business Statistics II course guide (handout):
http://web.nelson.usf.edu/reference/documents/BusStatistics.html