Finding Data Exercise: GSS and the ICPSR Websites

This video talks about the GSS and the ICPSR websites that are part of this exercise.
Part 1: GSS
Links to an external site.
Click “search variables”
The search box lets you search for words that may appear in the survey question or explanation within the dataset. NORC sets up their data searching so that you can get maximal results, but specifically based upon the appearance of those characters in that order. For example, you search the word “race” it will also return the variable “grace.” If you searched “rac” then it can also return results where the word “racial” appears. So, it’s good to experiment with the words that you’re interested in, especially if they share roots or partial spellings.
The first column shows you the variable name. This is the shorthand used to refer to the variable. The second column shows you variable label/description (and if you click “associated questions” it will show you the question or instructions to the person who administered the survey). The green rectangles that are marked show you which years the question was asked (if it’s gray, it wasn’t asked and if it’s gray-green striped that means not all subsamples were asked the question).
If you click the variable name, it will take you to a new page that shows you the survey question, related variables, and the response options.
Look for the variable named “astrolgy” – note the spelling. When you open it, it tells you that the survey question was “Now, for a new subject. Do you ever read a horoscope or your personal astrology report?” So now we can see that the variable is about if the respondent reads their horoscope. You will see that in 2008, everyone was asked this question, whereas it was asked only to some subsamples in 2006, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018 (and wasn’t asked in any other years. The section “summary by year” shows the frequencies of each answer in each year it was asked.
For the rest of Part 1, I want you to find six variables that are interesting. In this case, do not search for general demographics (race, gender, age, etc.) as those are almost universally common in large-scale datasets. Rather, I want you to search for one where a question was actually asked. Try to get some variety but you’re also welcome to include some that are related to each other conceptually or theoretically. For each one, I want you to include the following:
Variable name, the question, the year(s) it was asked, and the response options (these are in the “summary by year” section underneath “label”
I also want you to write why this variable was interesting (could be that it’s related to your topic, could be that you wanted to see if something like this was asked about, etc.)
Part 2: ICPSR --*SKIP THIS; THE ICPSR WEBSITE IS CURRENTLY DOWN, SO COMPLETE PARTS 1 AND 3*
Links to an external site.
The ICPSR is a major database of thousands of datasets. This is great because it offers a potential opportunity for finding data on pretty much any topic of interest to you. Whereas the GSS is fully, publicly available and can be downloaded right away, anything on ICPSR requires registration. One major benefit here is that this would require you to agree to the terms of use of these datasets (which include the reminder about ethical use and potential identification of participants. Another is that this limits some webscraping of these datasets. As such, this part of the exercise has you looking for potential datasets on topics/issues of interest to you.
I want you to do the following:
Choose a topic or issue that you’re interested. Explain why are you interested in this/what sorts of information are you looking for?
Find three datasets on the same/similar topics
To do this: in the find data type in the term or topic of interest to you
Then, I want you to go through the results (notice there is a search function within the results at top) and look for three datasets that are potentially useful
Click the first one and get the following (whenever possible write in your own words but you can quote sections as needed):
Title
Principal investigators
What it does (see summary)
Citation
Geographic coverage
Methodology, specifically the universe
Make sure to note what year(s) the data covers!
Copy the URL from your browser
Finally, for each dataset, does this sound like it will be useful/address what you’d hope it’d address if you wanted to use this data?
Part 3: Reflection
I want you to address the following: how easy or difficult was it to find data on things you’re interested in? In this case, did the GSS offer you potentially useful questions and did the ICPSR database turn up potentially useful datasets?
This is for you think about and see what possibilities might exist for you to have access to data for projects you may one day want to do. Note: the GSS and ICPSR are obviously not exhaustive!