ICPSR: Home

What is the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research?

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is the world's largest archive of digital social science data. ICPSR provides data and resources to a community of hundreds of institutions around the world including students, scholars, policy analysts, policymakers, government officials, and the media.

ICPSR data and resources are available to our full institution (students, staff, faculty, and more). You can search ICPSR’s data holdings by keyword, browse by thematic categories, and search by individual variables.

What kind of material does ICPSR collect?

ICPSR holds over 15,000 studies including over 5 million variables. Types of data include administrative data, surveys, video data, social media data, and more. Data searches can be filtered by topic, geographic location, subject terms/tags, funding agency, time period and more.

Thematic data collections include:

• CivicLEADS - Civic Learning, Engagement & Action Data Sharing
• Data Sharing for Demographic Research
• Health and Medical Care Archive
• National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
• National Archive of Data on Arts and Culture
• Resource Center for Minority Data
• And many more

Some of the data resources you will find at ICPSR include:

• A Bibliography of Data-Related Literature (useful for finding data that has been used in journals and other professional literature)
• Data-driven Learning Guides (for use teaching with data in the classroom)
• Data you can analyze online (no statistical packages required)

All data found at ICPSR include a copy and paste version of the data citation for your papers or projects.

ICPSR also provides opportunities for learning including their Summer Program in Quantitative Methods in Social Research.

How do I create an ICPSR Account?

To download data and resources at ICPSR, you’ll first need to create an account. All ICPSR data users need to agree to the terms and conditions of the data you’d like to download or analyze.

 Please follow these steps:

• Visit icpsr.umich.edu
• Select “log in” on the top right
• Select “create account”
• You may create an account in multiple ways including using a Google account or ORCID. We recommend using your institutional email address.
• Enter the requested information. We recommend selecting “yes” when asked if your institutional representative may view your information. This helps our institution better support data users.
• Once you’ve completed your account creation, you can begin to download data or analyze data online.

If you receive an error message, open a new private or "incognito" browser window and copy/paste this address into the search bar: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/. Retry your login. You can also try logging in from an on-campus location or by using a VPN. And you can always contact our campus representative, or send a request to icpsr-help@umich.edu.

Additional Information

• Do you produce your own data? By depositing your data at ICPSR, you can get usage reports about how often your data are being used, at what institutions, and links to publications using your data. Depositing data at ICPSR is always free.
• ICPSR can help you get your data ready to be shared, and they can embargo your data if you plan to publish with it. Learn more about depositing data at ICPSR, or contact deposit@icpsr.umich.edu.
• ICPSR also offers a Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving.
• Do you need a Data Management Plan? ICPSR offers video how-to’s, samples, and other support. Visit Guidelines for Effective Data Management Plans to learn more.
• You can find training videos, how-to’s, data demonstrations, and more at http://youtube.com/icpsr.