Randolph-Macon College is one of over 750 members of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, known as ICPSR.
The ICPSR houses the world’s largest online repository of data sets for social science researchers, with more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. Although predominantly social science-related data in areas such as education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, and terrorism, there are many data sets on a variety of topics related to the sciences, history, and other disciplines. These data sets are available for download and use by the entire R-MC community and are used with statistical software, such as SAS, SPSS, and Stata. Computer labs on campus already have SPSS installed.
Data sets range from studies such as Historical Transportation of Navigable Rivers, Canals, and Railroads in the United States to the National Surveys on Energy and the Environment, Fall 2008 and Fall 2015 to the American College Catalog Study Database, 1975-2011. In addition to locating data sets by broad topic, by title, or by keyword, you can also search by the variables in the studies as well as locate publications in which the data sets have been used. Documentation for interpreting the data files as well as copies of surveys, questionnaires and other supporting materials are included.
To get started, Just click on the Log In/Create Account link at Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research from a campus computer and create an account.