The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research or ICPSR is an organization of member institutions working together to acquire and preserve social science data, to provide open and equitable access to these data, and to promote effective data use.

• It is the world's largest archive of computer-readable social science data. 
• It provides Web access to documentation and data files for use with statistical software, such as R, SAS, SPSS, and Stata.  

Merrimack College is an institutional member of ICPSR, and members of the Merrimack Community may re-use research data deposited there at no cost.

For more information view this short video of all ICPSR services.

ICPSR maintains an extensive archive of data to support research and knowledge-building in the social and behavioral sciences. 

Subject areas included are:

ICPSR distributes:

• three plain text formats (column-delimited ASCII, comma-delimited ASCII, and tab-delimited ASCII),

• two SAS formats (SAS XPORT and CPORT files),

• two SPSS formats (SPSS SAV and portable files),

• and the single Stata data format.
   

Virtually every data file is available in a plain text format and they supply many data files in more than one format.

ICPSR prefered data:

• readily useable format (see the Library of Congress' Recommended Format Specifications), accessible in a variety of computing and technological settings.
• data formats that promote easy access and use without compromising research value.
• data files deposited in a raw format be transformable or convertible into formats usable by a variety of statistical or analytical software.
• data files unaccompanied by value-added software.

Note: Data in obsolete, proprietary, or hard-to-use formats may still be accepted by ICPSR, although these characteristics may compromise any future use of the data other than as-is, bit-level access.

ICPSR 101: Depositing Data with ICPSR

This ICPSR 101 video briefly explains the range of options ICPSR offers to members and non-members for depositing, sharing, and archiving data, ranging in price from free to fee-based, depending upon the user’s wants and needs.