Getting started with data research

Overview

Welcome. The Data Sets for Research site contains most of the recognized social sciences data available through the Penn State University Library system. Much of the information is digital online, along with print copies of many codebooks, software manuals, and reference books pertaining to data and statistical analysis. The library has high-end personal computers and monitors, equipped with GIS and statistical software.

Getting Started Doing Research

This tutorial is intended to assist patrons to find essential social sciences numbers, data and datasets to support doing your research. Before you can begin finding datasets, identify all relative variables that you will need. Some variable examples: age, gender, race, nationality, marital status, employment, education, political, religion, geographic location, housing, relative date(s), etc. Patrons who have a fundamental understanding of statistics, or who are unable to find the appropriate resources can use the CAT, E-Resource List (A-Z), online reference resources and Social Sciences Library to find the appropriate datasets.

Reference Librarians are available to help you find the resources you need. Please do not hesitate to contact a librarian for more assistance.

Research Resource Example

How you search and work with the data will depend on which study or data resource you select for your research. One of the primary data resources available to Penn State researchers of social sciences is the extensive ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research) data archive. You can search for studies in ICPSR's archive in three ways:

Search data holdings by either words or phrases appearing in the title, abstract, principal investigator, and ICPSR study number fields.
Search by subject using ICPSR's listing of subject headings.
Search the thesaurus for detailed subject terms, geographic terms, and personal names.