SHU Libraries Database Spotlight: ICPSR

By Sara Makler, Adjunct Librarian

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (or ICPSR) is, as the name implies, a consortium of universities who seek to collect, preserve, and disseminate social science data. ICPSR contains a vast quantity of data available to the SHU community. The data includes studies and files in areas such as population, economics, education, health, social and political behavior, social and political attitudes, history, crime, aging, and substance abuse. This trove of data can help you with research for assignments. 

You can easily search by topic and find data and the publications associated with it. This allows the use of these publications with an eye towards the actual data as well as the authors’ use of that data, enabling you to gain a familiarity with the use of raw data that you may not otherwise obtain. 

This is extremely useful. To get to ICPSR, go to the library homepage at https://library.shu.edu/home and click on Databases. 

Once on the database page, use the Search box to find “ICPSR”. 

 Alternatively, go directly here: https://library.shu.edu/ICPSRsite 

For more information about data resources at SHU, please visit: https://library.shu.edu/data 

For more information about Data Ethics, please visit: https://library.shu.edu/dataethics