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Odum Home
How to Access
Social Science and Health Data Files and Study Documentation
Location and Hours
The Odum Institute's Data Archive is located in Rooms 15A and 10 in the basement of Manning Hall and is open from 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Monday through Friday with the exception of University holidays. Paper documentation for all studies and files is located in Manning Hall. Machine readable data and codebook files are downloadable anytime from the Odum Institute's web and FTP sites as explained below.
Access and Support Policy
All computer files in the Odum Institute's Data Archive may be accessed for research and teaching purposes by any member of the faculty, student body or staff of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Odum Institute staff are available in Manning Hall to assist members of the UNC-CH community in accessing and using these files.
Certain data files may be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection and either a web browser or FTP client. Institute staff are not available to assist extramural clients with accessing and using these files.
Files downloaded from our Data Archive may not be redistributed outside the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in any form (electronic, electro-magnetic or printed) without prior permission from the Institute. Certain files, most notably those obtained by the Odum Institute from the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research and the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, may not be redistributed outside the University under any circumstances. Contact Diane Ramsey for further information.
Research publications, news or magazine articles and radio or television broadcasts employing statistical summaries of the Odum Institute data should give an appropriate citation to the Institute as the source of the data.
Please note that many principal investigators and data distributors do not always place all the information necessary for using the data for a study properly in a single, downloadable document. If you choose to download study documentation files, be sure to get and read carefully any files named README, doc or .doc in addition to those named codebook, cdbk or .cdbk. If you find no downloadable documentation files for a study listed in the catalog, you can find paper documentation in Rooms 15A and 10 in the basement of Manning Hall.
Files are offered "as is" with no warranty or claim of fitness for any purpose. In no event shall the University be liable for any actual, incidental or consequential damages arising from use of these files.
Downloading or Reading Files
There are three ways to access the Odum Institute's Data Archive files:
All of the above methods may be used by faculty, students and staff of UNC-CH. The first two may be used by anyone to access certain files.
Filenames, Extensions and File Types
While there are some exceptions, most filenames in the Odum Institute's Data Archive have names or extensions that follow the naming conventions listed in the table below. In general, you may easily download and use any ASCII coded file, SAS® export format or SPSS portable format file with any desktop computer (INTEL-WINx, Macintosh) or UNIX platform. SAS V6.x data files for SUN SOLARIS are portable across some other UNIX platforms. However, SAS format and other types of catalogs (*.sct01) for SUN SOLARIS are not.
Odum Institute Filename and Extension Conventions
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Name or Extension
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File Description
| FTP Download as
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cdbk or *.cdbk
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ASCII coded codebook file. (See also *.pdf.)
| ASCII
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colbin or *.colbin
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IBM MVS column binary coded raw data file
| Binary
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crdimge or *.crdimge
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ASCII coded raw data file with records of length 80
| ASCII
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data or *.data
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ASCII coded raw data file with varying length records
| ASCII
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dict or *.dict
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Binary copy of IBM MVS OSIRIS dictionary file
| Binary
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doc or doc.* or *.doc
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ASCII coded study documentation
| ASCII
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ebcdic or *.ebcdic
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Binary copy of IBM MVS EBCDIC coded raw data file
| Binary
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freq(s) or *.freq(s)
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ASCII coded frequency distributions of study variables
| ASCII
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*.pdf
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File in ADOBE® Portable Document Format
| Binary
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sas or .sas
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ASCII coded SAS® statements
| ASCII
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sascode or sascrds
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ASCII coded SAS® statements
| ASCII
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sas.export or *.export
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SAS® export format file (Portable across most platforms)
| Binary
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*.sct01
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SAS® V6.x catalog file for Sun Solaris
| Binary
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*.ssd01
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SAS® V6.x data file for Sun Solaris
| Binary
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spcrds or *.spcrds
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ASCII coded SPSS® statements
| ASCII
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spss.portable *.portable
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SPSS® portable file (Portable across most platforms)
| ASCII
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*.vb
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S370 IBM/MVS RECFM=VB (variable length, blocked records)
| Binary
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Reading SAS® Export Files
Once downloaded, SAS® export files are best read into SAS using the XPORT I/O engine on a LIBNAME statement. For example, to read the export file sas.exp with a SAS file name of s9708 located in subdirectory project1 on the C: drive of an INTEL-WINx PC, you might use the following commands:
LIBNAME input XPORT "C:\project1\sas.exp" ;
DATA whatever ; SET input.s9708 ;
The libref (input) could be any valid SAS® name. You must have the XPORT keyword following the libref. Note that the name of the file must be included between the quote marks as well as any needed drive and path information.
If you do not know the name of the internal SAS file name, you may use a PROC CONTENTS to display the names of any SAS files contained in the export file by using the keyword _ALL_ as the SAS filename used with the DATA= parameter as in
LIBNAME input XPORT "C:\project1\sas.exp" ;
PROC CONTENTS DATA=input._ALL_ ;
If the export file contains both a SAS data file and a PROC FORMAT CNTLOUT file for reconstructing formats for variables in the SAS data file, you must reconstruct the formats prior to using the data and store them in the same disk subdirectory as the SAS data file. This subdirectory should be referred to with the libref of "library". Assuming the CNTLOUT file had the SAS internal name "formats" and you were using the data file above, the SAS code would be
LIBNAME library "C:\project1" ;
LIBNAME input XPORT "C:\project1\sas.exp" ;
PROC FORMAT CNTLIN=input.formats LIBRARY=library ;
DATA library.s9708 ; SET input.s9708 ;
Reading SPSS® Portable Files
To read a downloaded SPSS® portable file into a windowed version of SPSS®, you may simply click on File ==> Open, then select "SPSS portable" from the "Files of type:" box and give the correct filename. It is best to have the file extension be ".por" so SPSS will display the filename automatically. If you are using a batch version of SPSS® you should use the IMPORT comand. For example, to read the file c:\project1\spss.por, issue the command
IMPORT FILE="c:\project1\spss.por".
To read a downloaded SPSS® portable file into SAS®, use the SPSS I/O engine on the LIBNAME statement as in
LIBNAME input SPSS "C:\project1\spss.por" ;
DATA whatever ; SET input._first_ ;
The _first_ name is a dummy name because an SPSS file does not have an internal filename.
Downloading A Questionnaire For A Particular Poll
Downloading Questions and Frequencies
You can download all of the questions and the frequency distributions of their responses for any Louis Harris, USA Today, Carolina, Southern Focus, or National Network of State Polls poll from our Poll Question Database using our Public Opinion Poll Question Database search page.
For instance, if you wanted all of the questions in Harris Study No. 961405, you would do the following:
- When you get to the search page, enter the study number (i.e. 961405) in the first text entry box.
- Click on "Survey Information" in the "Within:" box.
- Then, click on "Louis Harris" in the "From:" box.
- Finally, click on "a downloadable file" in the "Return matches as:" box, and then "Do the search".
The list of questions will then be available to save in your browser.
Alternatively, if you are already searching in our Public Opinion Question Database and have found a particular question, simply click on "Get all the questions for this poll" and you can then download this file and save it in your browser.
If you also download the data for a study in either a SAS ® export format file or an SPSS® portable file, please note that the order of the variable names in those files does not necessarily correspond to the number order of questions in the study. For example, for a given study the variable name Q1 may not be the first variable found in the SAS or SPSS file. However, there will definitely be a variable called Q1 located somewhere in the file.
Downloading Images of the Paper Questionnaire
If a poll instrument was available to us in paper form, we have included an image file of the questionnaire in Adobe(R) Acrobat(R) .pdf format in the files available for that poll. This file is listed on the detailed catalog record for the study. The detailed catalog record can be accessed from either a Public Opinion Poll Question Database search or a catalog search. Simply click on the name of the file, usually "quest.pdf", and our system will download it to your PC. In order to view or print the file, you must have the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader installed as a helper application for your web browser.
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