The Institute for Social Research was founded on the idea that data form the strongest foundation for public policy decisions. Over time, the Institute also began producing data that would equip the larger public to make its own decisions regarding governance, health, and careers. As part of ISR’s scientific mission to conduct and widely disseminate rigorous social science research as a tool for public education, we strive to make readily available all information we produce.
The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research offers more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. It hosts 21 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.
Prior to 1996, the Institute had its own publishing office, and the researchers published many reports, articles, and manuscripts during this time. The ISR Publications Database currently houses these citations and, where possible, provides full-text access.
Additionally, in our ongoing efforts to promote transparency and integrity, many of the long-term studies at ISR have policies that preclude the research faculty from seeing the data in its final form until they are publicly released.
A number of ISR research project teams maintain websites designed to help researchers use the data they produce or archive. A sampling of these websites are listed below; however, this is by no means an exhaustive list of the projects at ISR or the data available.
- American National Election Studies (ANES)
- Comparative Study of Electoral Systems
- Constituency-Level Elections Archive
- Criminal Justice Administrative Records System (CJARS)
- Health and Retirement Study (HRS)
- Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS)
- Michigan Center on the Demography of Aging (MiCDA)
- Michigan Census Research Data Center
- Monitoring the Future (MTF)
- Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)
- Surveys of Consumers
- World Values Survey
- Youth Policy Lab