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Numeric Data Archives

The Penn Library maintains subscriptions or memberships to several data archives, which provide numeric data sets to subscribing institutions at little or no cost. In most cases, data archives require mediated access to data sets.

Procedures for obtaining numeric data from individual archives is provided here.

NB. This page is temporary and will change as the Penn Library enhances its own numeric data identification and description tools.

Subscription Data Archives

ICPSR - Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research

ICPSR archives data sets for more than 4,470 studies in political science (including elections, public opinion, and legislative voting records), sociology, economics, population studies (including strong holdings in U.S. decennial census data), criminal justice, public health, aging, education, psychology, history, and substance abuse.

Roper Center for Public Opinion Research

The Roper Center archives more than 15,000 public opinion polls, 1936-present. Well-known Roper collections include the General Social Survey (1972-present), National Exit Polls (1972-present), the Roper Reports (aka Roper Social and Political Trends, 1973-1994), as well as Gallup, Roper, and network and print media polls. International coverage is provided through Gallup polls from European countries, as well as large collections of Latin American and Japanese polls.

Roper Center catalog of holdings: search titles and abstracts of Roper Center polls.
iPOLL: search fulltext individual questions from Roper Center polls.

Roper Center data sets require mediated access. To obtain Roper Center data sets or for assistance in determining whether ICPSR data are appropriate for your needs, contact:

Lauris Olson, (215) 898-0119, Social Sciences Bibliographer, Van Pelt Library/6206

Roper Center data sets obtained recently for Penn users

General Social Survey, 1972-2002. Cumulative data file (ASCII text and SPSS portable formats), codebook (PDF format), and SPSS syntax file.
Roper Social and Political Trends Data, 1973-1994 aka Bowling Alone. Data file (ASCII text and SPSS portable formats) and codebook.

Sociometrics SSEDL - Sociometrics Social Science Electronic Data Library.: SSEDL archives 350-plus studies in family and population issues, including aging, drug abuse, adolescent pregnancy, health, disability, and AIDS and STD. The SSEDL Contextual Data Archives provides convenient access to 1970 and 1980 decennial census data, derived from the Urban Institute's Under Class Data Base and the National Opinion Research Center's 1970, 1980 and 1990 Census Extract Data. Studies include ASCII text data sets, SPSS and SAS dictionary files, and Adobe Acrobat PDF-format documentation.

Unrestricted Data Archives

Odum Institute Data Library - Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.: The Odum Institute Data Library hosts the Louis Harris Data Center, exclusive national repository for Louis Harris public opinion data, and the National Network of State Polls, the largest available collection of state-level surveys.
Interactive Statistical Datasets Online - Van Pelt Library Special Bibliography.: A handy guide to freely-available numeric information.

Other useful resources

Penn Library Web Databases - Statistics and Datasets
Quantitative Skills - Van Pelt Library Research Guide.
Public Opinion Polls Research Guide - Van Pelt Library web page.