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ICPSR - Social Research Data: Step 4 - Download Data

How to find and use data from ICPSR

Download Data

Download Data


Data can typically be downloaded from the Summary page. Note: some datasets require you to contact the principal investigators to obtain access

To Download Data

  1. Go to Datasets section
  2. Click on the file type you want to download
  3. You may need to login
  4. Read Terms of Use and if you agree, click, "I agree"
  5. A zip file will then be downloaded to your computer. Put it in a folder where you can find it. Remember to have a good file structure to hold your research, using meaningful file and folder names put in a logical order
  6. The zip file will contain the codebook, data and other useful files
  7. Open the data file in your program of choice to perform statistical analyswa to validate or repudiate your thesis

File Types

  • ASCII format: ASCII format is always available so that by using the codebook you can process the data in any program of your choosing
  • Statistical software: frequently SAS, SPSS or STATA file types are already prepared and ready for download
  • Large projects: data from large projects is separated into smaller downloads to work with a smaller file targeted to your data needs

Note

  • Randomly hunting for correlations will by chance on a limited dataset (like these) may give false positive correlations (Type I Error)
    • If you find an interesting correlation by chance:
      • Form a valid theory for why the variables may be correlated
      • Require a higher confidence level
      • Then test the theory on a completely different dataset for validation