The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), located within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, is a membership-based, not-for-profit organization serving member colleges and universities in the United States and abroad.

ICPSR provides access to the world's largest archive of computerized social science data (see ICPSR Index ), training facilities for the study of quantitative social analysis techniques, and resources for social scientists using advanced computer technologies.

The University of Guelph, the University of Waterloo, and Wilfrid Laurier University are all members of an Ontario Consortium of Universities that subscribe to ICPSR. As such, each university pays a yearly fee which allows individuals or organizations directly involved in teaching or academic research to use these data files. These files are located at the University of Michigan.

A new service, ICPSR Direct, now allows current authorized members of the University of Guelph and University of Waterloo to download data directly. Follow the link for more information and access: ICPSR Direct.

PLEASE NOTE:

Users from Wilfrid Laurier University as well as those users requiring TDR to access the data and create SAS programs, please read the following section.

Once a user makes a request (to the TDR home institution), the data is transferred to the TDR and is stored here for the current user, as well as for any future use.

The data usually arrives in a 'raw' format, with electronic codebooks and sample programs. These programs can read the data into SAS or SPSS. Each data set is unique and the documentation varies. If it is apparent the data will be heavily used, staff of the DRC will mount the data on our web retrieval system. This allows for easy extraction and some statistical analysis. If this is a 'one off' request TDR staff from the home institution of the requestor  will help the user in preparing the necessary SAS or SPSS program to read the data.

Making the data available on our web site can usually be accomplished  within a few working days of the initial request, providing there are supporting SAS programs. There could be a slight delay, depending on staff availability.