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Finding & Using Data from ICPSR

The Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research is a depository of datasets for use in secondary data analysis.

Downloading data

Most of the ICPSR datasets are downloadable only by current A&M-SA students,staff, and faculty.  Federally funded data are freely available to the general public.

 Steps for downloading data:

  1. You must login to your ICPSR account
  2. Click your desired data format.
  3. Select the dataset(s) in the study that you want to download.
  4. Read the Terms of Use prior to hitting "Agree" button
  5. The download, into .zip file, should begin immediately.

Hints/Advice

  • Use the Browse Documentation tab to decide if the study fits your information needs.
  • By downloading data from ICPSR, you are agreeing not to share the data with persons not authorized by ICPSR to receive it and to follow the terms of use.
     

Data download formats

ICPSR lets you download data in several common data formats, including:

  • SAS
  • SPSS
  • Stata
  • Comma seperated values (CSV)
  • Other plain text formats (details)

Files are compressed and downloaded as .zip archives.

Restricted data

Most ICPSR data holdings are public-use files with no access restrictions.

ICPSR also provides access to restricted use versions for researchers and sponsor-supervised students that comply with access requirements.

Read more about accessing ICPSR restricted use data.

Reading Data into SPSS

Reading Data into STATA