How do you get all this data? Good thing Puget Sound is a member of ICPSR! Established in 1962, ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research) is an international consortium of about 700 academic institutions and research organizations, that provides leadership and training in data access, data curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community. ICPSR maintains a data archive of more than 500,000 files of research in the social sciences. It hosts 16 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.
How do you navigate all of this data? Collins Library was fortunate to have staff from ICPSR come to campus last Friday to provide training on how to search for, download, and utilize the datasets found in their archive. Faculty and librarians from Puget Sound, the University of Washington Seattle and Tacoma campuses, Pacific Lutheran University and Saint Martin’s University attended a very informative session that assisted us in answering those questions and many more.
How do you use all of this data? ICPSR also promotes educational activities including their ‘Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research,’ a comprehensive curriculum of intensive courses in research design, statistics, data analysis, and social methodology. ICPSR also leads several initiatives that encourage use of data in teaching, particularly for undergraduate instruction. Check out their teaching and learning site for more details.