News

April 2019

The 1948-2016 American National Election Study Cumulative Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. See the introduction in the online HTML codebook for more information on this version.


News From Previous Dates


March 2019

The 1972-2018 General Social Survey (GSS) Cumulative Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. See the introduction in the online HTML codebook for more information on this version.

June 2018

All datasets on the SDA Archive page that use SDA 4.0 have now been updated to use 4.0.3. This new version of SDA will be released to ACS members in the near future. Enhancements include:

September 2017

The 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) has been added to the SDA Archive. See the Abstract for more information on this version.

June 2017

All datasets on the SDA Archive page that use SDA 4.0 have now been updated to use 4.0.2. This new version of SDA will be released to ACS members in the near future. Enhancements include:

May 2017

All datasets on the SDA Archive page that use SDA 4.0 have now been updated to use 4.0.1. This new version of SDA will be released to ACS members in the near future. Enhancements include:

April 2017

The 1972-2016 General Social Survey (GSS) Cumulative Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. See the introduction in the online HTML codebook for more information on this version.

The 2016 American National Election Study Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. See the introduction in the online HTML codebook for more information on this version.

October 2015

SDA 4.0 has been released. SDA 4.0 is a major update. The user interface has been substantially modified, providing a more modern look with rich, dynamic components. Also, a new SDA Manager web application is part of the SDA distribution package. The SDA Manager consolidates all of the management functions for an SDA archive into one web interface. The SDA Manager webapp also supports the configuration of personal user workspaces. These user workspaces enable analysts to create and store recoded and computed variables in their own private storage areas. The SDA Manager also allows an archive manager to easily configure dataset-level access control -- specifying which users can access which datasets. For more information, see the 4.0 Installation Guide and 4.0 Manual on our Documentation page. In particular, see the Updates page in the 4.0 Manual.

April 2015

The 1972-2014 General Social Survey (GSS) Cumulative Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. See the introduction in the online HTML codebook for more information on this version.

May 2014

Video tutorials about SDA are now available on the SDA YouTube Channel. Want to learn about using the SDA 4.0 user interface? Try the new SDA YouTube Channel.

April 2014

SDA 4.0 interface now available for datasets in the SDA Archive. Most datasets on our SDA Archive page are now available with the new SDA 4.0 -- in addition to the older SDA 3.5.

August 2013

The 2012 American National Election Study Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. See the introduction in the online HTML codebook for more information on this version.

March 2013

The 1972-2012 General Social Survey (GSS) Cumulative Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. See the introduction in the online HTML codebook for more information on this version.

October 2012

The SDA Web site was down for several days due to multiple hardware failures. For more information on the problems during October with the SDA Web site, please see the Server Update Page.

July 2012

The Survey of Consumer Finances (Extract File 1989-2010) has been added to the SDA Archive. Data from the SCF are widely used, from analysis at the Federal Reserve and other branches of government to scholarly work at the major economic research centers.

March 2011

The 1972-2010 General Social Survey (GSS) Cumulative Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. See the introduction in the online HTML codebook for more information on this version.

February 2011

SDA 3.5 has been released. For a complete list of the new features see the Updates section in the online SDA 3.5 Manual. Note that version 3.5 now calculates appropriate standard errors for regression coefficients for complex sample designs (like GSS).  This requires extra computation time, especially for logit and probit regression.  You can still use the previous simple random sample computations as an option.

January 2011

All the studies on the Archive page are now accessed using SDA 3.5. This new version of SDA will be released to ACS members in February.

A new book has been published that uses SDA for data analysis exercises. Conducting Empirical Analysis: Public Opinion in Action, by Rosalee A. Clawson and Zoe M. Oxley, is a public opinion workbook that includes a variety of data analysis exercises that use SDA.

May 2010

The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) is using SDA's Quick Tables software to power its new Statewide Survey Interactive Tools. Click on the "Create crosstabs" button to try it out.

January 2010

SDA 3.4 has been released. For a complete list of the new features see the Updates section in the online SDA 3.4 Manual. Versions for Linux (on Intel x86 and compatible platforms), Windows and Solaris (on the Sparc platform) are now available for ACS members. All the studies on the Archive page are now accessed using SDA 3.4.

Question text has been added to the 2008 American National Election Study Dataset in the SDA Archive.

November 2009

The SDA Web Site has had a stylistic update. But the organization of the site and its content remains largely the same.

September 2009

A preliminary version of the 2008 American National Election Study Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. See the introduction in the online HTML codebook for more information on this version.

June 2009

SDA 3.3 has been released. This new version of SDA includes enhancements to customized subsetting, including the output of CSV format files (for import into a spreadsheet) and the inclusion of user-created variables in subset datasets. Disclosure rules that protect confidentiality can also be specified in this version. For a complete list of the new features see the "Updates" section in the online SDA 3.3 Manual. Versions for Linux (on Intel x86 and compatible platforms), Windows and Solaris (on the Sparc platform) are now available for ACS members.

May 2009

All the studies on the Archive page are now accessed using SDA 3.3. It will be released in mid June.

March 2009

A preliminary version of the 1972-2008 General Social Surveys Cumulative Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. See the introduction in the online HTML codebook for more information on this version.

October 2008

The SDA Web site has moved to a new server. The new server is a Dell PowerEdge 2950 III (2 Quad Core Xeon E5440 processors, 8 GB RAM) running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. (SDA's previous server was an old Solaris/Sparc machine that is being retired by the Berkeley campus.)

May 2008

SDA 3.2 has been released. Searching is the major new feature of this release. (You can try it out on our Archive page.) Versions for Windows, Linux (on Intel x86 and compatible platforms) and Solaris (on the Sparc platform) are now available for ACS members.

March 2008

All the studies on the Archive page are now accessed using SDA 3.2. This new version of SDA provides a search function and will be released soon.

Quick Tables for the GSS 1972-2006 Cumulative dataset have been added to the SDA Archive page.

December 2007

New user contributions added to the Community page: ICPSR contributed an SPSS-Python script that converts an SPSS system file or portable file into the files required to set up the dataset in SDA. The University of Victoria and University of Toronto contributed an SDA Tutorial.

November 2007

The 1998 Dutch Prejudice Survey has been added to the SDA Archive.

August 2007

The 1948-2004 American National Election Study Cumulative Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. The study includes a search utility that is currently under development. (See our Projects page for more information on searching.)

July 2007

The 1972-2006 General Social Surveys Cumulative Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. The 2006 GSS includes a search utility that is currently under development. (See our Projects page for more information on searching.)

April 2007

SDA 3.1 has been released. Versions for Solaris (on the Sparc platform), Windows and Linux (on Intel x86 and compatible platforms) are now available for ACS members. Also, we have switched to using SDA 3.1 for all the studies listed on our Archive page.

December 2006

"Investigating Community and Social Capital", an ICPSR instructional module, has been added to the Community page. This site "teaches data analysis of social capital, as discussed in Robert D. Putnam's Bowling Alone." The exercises use SDA.

September 2006

SDA 3.0 has been released. Versions for Solaris (on the Sparc platform), Windows and Linux (on Intel x86 and compatible platforms) are now available for ACS members.

August 2006

The SDA Archive page is now using SDA 3.0 for all studies. We plan to release this version to ACS members in September.

May 2006

A test version of the new SDA interface is now available in our archive. The next version of SDA will provide users with a new interface. It includes program selection, variable selection and program options all on one screen. To try it out, go to the Archive page and select the first GSS 2004 link. Comments are welcome. We expect this version to be released to ACS members in the fall.

January 2006

SDA 2.1 has been released and is now being used for our SDA Archive. Versions for Solaris (on the Sparc platform), Windows and Linux (on Intel x86 and compatible platforms) are now available for ACS members.

October 2005

The "Other Archives" page has been changed to the "Community" page. The "Community" page now includes various SDA resources: books that use SDA for exercises, contributions from SDA users, and the previous listing of other archives that use SDA.

September 2005

The 1972-2004 General Social Surveys Cumulative Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive.

The dataset for the 2004 American National Election Study (ANES) has been added to the SDA archive. This dataset has been set up using a new test version of SDA -- version 2.0. This new version allows users to run tables using character variables. Since the ANES 2004 has a number of character variables (like the name of the state where the interview was carried out), this dataset is a good one to use to test out those new features. As always, let us know (at sda@csm.berkeley.edu) if you encounter any problems with the new version.

SETUPS (Supplementary Empirical Teaching Units in Political Science) has been added to the "Other Archives" Page. The SETUPS site features Voting Behavior: The 2004 Election, an instructional module based on the 2004 American National Election Study (ANES) data.

Additional data files have been added to the SDA Archive. Census Data: The American Community Surveys for 2000-2003 have been added to the SDA Archive. The American Community Surveys are designed to replace the long form of the Census. The 1990 U.S. 1% PUMS dataset has also been added to the archive.

Election Studies: The Cumulative ANES 1948-2000 has been added.

March 2005

The 1986 Bay Area Race and Politics Survey has been added to the SDA Archive Although this dataset is relatively old, it is of interest as the main dataset used for the book The Scar of Race by Paul M. Sniderman and Thomas Piazza. Funding recently became available to mark up the dataset and expand the documentation so that it could be put up in SDA.

January 2005

SDA 1.4 has been released. Versions for Solaris (on the Sparc platform), Windows and Linux (on Intel x86 and compatible platforms) are available. Although a number of enhancements are included in the 1.4 release, the major addition is the ability to produce charts with the crosstabulation output.

November 2004

SDA 1.3 for Linux on Intel x86 and compatible platforms has been released. (Although we had previously developed a test port of SDA 1.2 to Linux, this is the first official Linux release of SDA.)

September 2004

The SDA crosstabulation program in our SDA Archive now generates charts automatically. Users have a choice of charts and can also specify the size of the chart and the orientation (horizontal or vertical) for bar charts. This chart-generation capability is still under development and not yet ready for release. We hope to include charts within other SDA programs in the future.

August 2004

The 2000 California 5% PUMS Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. This dataset is a 5% sample of all households and persons in California, taken from the 2000 Census. The dataset has one record for each person in the sample and the household variables have been appended to each person's record. The dataset contains a sample of 1.7 million California residents. The smallest identifiable geographic area contains 100,000 persons.

SDA's Quick Tables application now automatically generates charts. You can try it out with the GSS Cumulative Datafile on the SDA Archive page.

April 2004

The 2000 U.S. 1% PUMS Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. This dataset is a 1% sample of all households and persons in the United States, taken from the 2000 Census. The dataset has one record for each person in the sample and the household variables have been appended to each person's record. SDA 1.3 Released

SDA 1.3 is now available for ACS members. This version includes enhancements to several programs. For a summary of all the updates since 1.2b, see the "updates" section of the online SDA 1.3 Manual (in the "Documentation" section).

February 2004

The 'Listcase' program is now available for the datasets on the SDA Archive page. Select 'List values of individual cases' to access the program.

January 2004

The SDA Archive page is now using the forthcoming version 1.3. SDA 1.3 will be made available to ACS members in the near future.

December 2003

The 2000 California 1% PUMS Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive. This dataset is a 1% sample of all households and persons in California, taken from the 2000 Census. The dataset has one record for each person in the sample and the household variables have been appended to each person's record.

September 2003

The 1972-2002 General Social Surveys Cumulative Dataset has been added to the SDA Archive.

June 2003

Two new features were added to the GSS Cumulative Datafile in the SDA Archive. A link to a set of "Quick Tables" -- a simplified way of obtaining analysis results -- has been added to the archive page. As time permits, more Quick Tables will be added. (For more on the "Quick Tables" project see the "Projects" page.) Also, an alternate HTML codebook version -- with variables stratified by year -- has been made available to help users determine if specific questions were asked in a certain year or range of years.'Crosstabulation' Program Updated

The statistic in the crosstabulation program that determines the color code for each cell in a table has been revised. The statistic now used for that purpose is called a "standardized residual." Documentation for the revised residuals (now referred to as a Z-statistic) is available online by clicking on the Z-statistic option on the crosstabs option page.

April 2003

The new Cultural Policy and the Arts National Data Archive (CPANDA) has been added to the listing of 'Some Other Archives that Use SDA'.

August 2002

The California Workforce Survey 2001-2002 and the Chicago African American Survey 1997 have been added to the SDA Archive.

The comparison of means program now includes an option for producing a multiple classification analysis (MCA).

December 2001

Recode and Compute are now available for some studies. The SDA site now provides an option to run the RECODE and COMPUTE programs on some of the datasets (GSS 2000, ANES 2000, and National Race and Politics). These programs allow you to create new variables derived from existing variables in each dataset. The new variables are placed into a public work area, which is available to all users of the SDA Website. See this note for more information.

August 2001

The 2000 American National Election Study (ANES) has been added to the SDA archive.

July 2001

The 1972-2000 General Social Survey Cumulative Dataset has been added to the SDA archive.

March 2001

The 1972-1998 General Social Survey Cumulative Dataset has been added to the SDA archive.

September 2000

The American Political Science Association (APSA) presented SDA the 2000 "Best Instructional Software Award" at their annual meeting in Washington D.C.

The 1998-1999 Multi-Investigator Study has been added to the archive. The study was a national random-digit telephone survey funded by the National Science Foundation. It involved the active participation of thirteen teams of investigators and was focused on public opinion related to a wide variety of social and political issues.

July 2000

The 2000 Innovators Award was recently presented by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) for SDA and the ICPSR Web site for the General Social Survey (GSS).

March 2000

SDA 1.2 has been released. This version includes enhancements to several programs. For example, the XCODEBK program now uses HTML tables and frames to both improve the appearance and ease the navigation of HTML codebooks. Also, the output of various analysis programs has been enhanced with color-coding of the cells in the tables. (These improvements can be viewed in the SDA Archive at this site.) In addition, SDA 1.2 includes new programs: correl (correlation matrix), regress (multiple regression), and listcase (list contents of selected variables for selected cases). For a summary of all the updates since 1.1, see the "updates" section of the online SDA 1.2 Manual (in the "Documentation" section).

October 1999

The on-line GSS and ANES codebooks in the SDA Archive have been updated using a beta version of the forthcoming 1.2 XCODEBK program. The improvements include a persistent table-of-contents frame for easier navigation and enhanced HTML formatting of various aspects of the codebook.

September 1999

Some analysis programs have been updated to include the color-coding of table cells. The cells are color coded in order to aid in detecting patterns. See the help for each program for details on how the color-coding works for that program.

April 1999

Variable name specifications are now case-insensitive for most studies. Most of the problems users have reported with using the SDA Archive turned out to be problems with the case of variable names. For example, many GSS analysts were accustomed to seeing the GSS variable names in upper case and therefore would specify the variable "life", for example, as "LIFE" -- which would produce a "variable not found" message. In response, we've added an option to the archive configuration ("HARC") file so that user-specified variable names will automatically be converted to upper or lower case as appropriate for the study. Now, for most studies, case is not an issue when specifying variable names.

The SDA 1.1 documentation -- available from this site's "Documentation" section -- has been updated to reflect the features in the final, release version.

The "Projects" section has been updated with information about current work on enhanced HTML codebooks. There's also new information about our collaboration with UC Berkeley's Survey Research Center on a project funded through ICPSR's Data Documentation Initiative (DDI).

We've added additional links to some other sites using SDA software. See the "Other Archives" section.

January 1999

Version 1.1 of the SDA software has been installed on our Web site. The major changes are as follows:

Updates to online datasets:

The General Social Survey now includes 1996 data. Complex standard errors have also been enabled for the Comparison of Means program. For this purpose we are using the 'sampcode' variable to define the primary sampling units. Note that these standard errors will usually be larger than those computed by assuming simple random sampling.

American National Election Study: the 1998 release of that dataset has been installed. This new release includes two new weights which post-stratify the sample distribution to match the CPS distribution on categories of education and age.

November 1998

The first release version of the IDOC programs and documentation has been completed. IDOC is a joint project of the Census Bureau and CSM to develop network-browsable documentation for CAI instruments written in the CASES Q language.

February 1998

The SDA Web Site has had an aesthetic make-over. The content remains largely the same but we hope the new look will improve navigation between pages and make it easier for our users to locate specific topics.

January 1998

All of the online datasets available for analysis have now been converted to the new SDA (CSA version 3) format. The last two datasets converted were the ANES cumulative file for 1952-92 and the California 1% Microdata Sample from the 1990 Census.

Standard errors project: A project is underway to add the capability of calculating standard errors for complex samples to the SDA comparison of means program.

Other data archives are beginning to use SDA. Our home page now provides links to some of those archives that may be of general interest.

October 1997

Most of the online datasets available for analysis have been converted to the new SDA (CSA version 3) format.

New features available with SDA programs:

New datasets have been added to our archvie:

July 1997

Downloading and subsetting are now standard. The procedures to allow downloading and subsetting of data files and documentation are now included in the main archive as options for many of the datasets. Previously, these options were in the section for "Projects Under Development."

Additional Version 3 (SDA) programs: work is continuing on the new version of the CSA programs for the Web. Since these programs are designed specifically for the Web, and have a different interface and output format than the older CSA programs, we intend to give this new set of programs a new name: SDA -- Survey Documentation and Analysis. Previously, the only program available to test was 'tables'. Additional programs and test datasets will now begin to appear.

March 1997

New location: you will have noticed that the CSA Demonstration Archive has moved to a new computer.

New format for demonstration archive: the one-stage screen for selecting both a study and an action has been replaced by a two-stage procedure. First you select a study (perhaps after viewing study abstracts), and then you select the action (browse codebook, run a table, etc.). This two-stage procedure is closer to what an actual data archive will need to do. The one-stage procedure is still available as one of the "Other Versions of Data Archive."

Projects under development: A new version of the procedures to create customized subsets of data files and documentation has been installed. You can try it out on the CSA test dataset. In addition, if you want to try it out on larger datasets, including the large GSS file, you can access the procedure by selecting "Projects Under Development.".

September 1996

New and revised datasets:

New Page on Projects Under Development:

March 1996

New and revised datasets:

January 1996

The following documents were added for access online: New datasets were added: