ICPSR 2018 - 2019 Annual Report

2019 was a big year for ICPSR! Thousands of new and updated datasets, the Biennial Meeting for our Official and Designated Representatives, and being awarded the National Medal for Library and Museum Services are just a few highlights.

From ICPSR Director Margaret Levenstein

ICPSR Directo Maggie Levenstein

There is so much to be thankful for as I look back at ICPSR’s Fiscal Year 2018-2019. Among the highlights of this eventful period in the Consortium’s history, our membership has continued to grow, and as of this writing stands at almost 800 member institutions. We have celebrated each milestone as ICPSR has upgraded the data systems—from ingest to curation to dissemination—behind our data resources. We have welcomed new leaders to the staff, including A.J. Million (National Archive of Criminal Justice Data), Allyson Flaster (College & Beyond II), Trisha Kunst Martinez (Computing and Network Services), and John Lemmer (Administration), to help move our consortium forward. With your support, we have continued to make advances in the field of data stewardship, with themes including new data types (social media, imaging, streaming, biomedical, web, transactional), confidentiality protection, research transparency and reproducibility, and providing data users “more access with less burden.” And, as you might have heard, in June 2019, we raised a glass to the ICPSR community as we celebrated being awarded the National Medal for Museum and Library Service! Given by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, this is the nation’s highest honor for libraries and museums. DataJeff, former ICPSR Intern John Leverso, then-Council Chair Michael Jones-Correa, and I headed to the award ceremony in Washington, D.C., to celebrate this special honor for the ICPSR community. None of this would have been possible without our Consortium members, our data depositors, our partners and collaborators around the world. Thank you so much for your continued support and engagement in ICPSR’s data stewardship efforts. 

From ICPSR Council Chair Michael Jones-Correa

It’s been an honor to serve as ICPSR’s Council chair during such a pivotal time in the organization’s history. I’m excited to see the impact of new projects including ResearchDataGov and LinkageLibrary. I was thrilled to be part of ICPSR’s contingent in Washington to celebrate ICPSR’s National Medal for Library and Museum Services. I can’t wait to see the things to come in the years ahead for this organization. In Council news, I’d like to say a warm thank-you to those who are completing their terms and cycling off of the ICPSR Council in February 2020: Past Chair Chandra Muller (University of Texas at Austin), Christine L. Borgman (University of California, Los Angeles), Jane Fry (Carleton University), Verna Keith (University of Alabama at Birmingham), Robert Stine (University of Pennsylvania), Elizabeth Groff (Temple University), and Keith Whitfield (Wayne State University). The consortium is better for your Council contributions. I am honored to pass the gavel to the new Council Chair, Lisa Cook (Michigan State University), and incoming Council members elected at the 2019 ICPSR Biennial Meeting: Dave Armstrong (Western University), James Doiron (University of Alberta), Kristin R. Eschenfelder (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Mark Hansen (Columbia University), Trevon Logan (Ohio State University), and Ken Smith (University of Utah). Thanks, ICPSR Community!

New Initiatives

Educational Activities

The ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research has seen a fairly steady growth in the number of attendees over the past 25 years, with 1,000 students attending in 2019. The 2019 Summer Program included:

  • Two 4-week sessions in Ann Arbor
  • 31 workshops
  • 12 lectures
  • 20 Blalock lectures
  • 38 statistical short workshops
  • Five substantive short workshops
  • Eight off-site locations across the US, Canada, and Europe
  • 1,000 participants

This was the second year of ICPSR Summer Program Diversity Fellowship Initiative to facilitate the methodological training of graduate students from underrepresented groups. The program received 191 applications, awarding 31 scholarships (compared to 15 Diversity Scholarship Awards in 2018).

There were two undergraduate competition winners and one graduate competition winner in the 2019 ICPSR Research Paper Competitions.

Arnold Johnsen, (Statistics) of Northwestern University earned First Place in the Undergraduate Competition with a paper titled "Modeling Parole & Conditional Release: An Application of Predictive Analytics Techniques."

Emalie Rell, (Sociology/Anthropology) of Elizabethtown College earned Second Place in the Undergraduate Competition with a paper titled "Mother Doesn't Always Know Best: The Effects of Sex and Support for Sex Education on Views of Teen Access to Birth Control without Parental Consent."

Angela Lee, (Sociology) of Harvard University earned First Place in the Master's Competition with a paper titled "A Time-Sensitive Analysis of the Work-Crime Relationship for Young People."

Size of ICPSR's Holdings as of 28-Jun-2019

On-Demand
(Every file in each of these studies is downloadable)
  Total Members Public
Studies 8435 5300 3135
Datasets 70764  31766 38998
Files 217990  90963 127027
ASCII data files 40333  23680 16653
SAS setup and transport files 40235  15829 24406
SPSS setup, portable, and system files 31768  13319 18449
Stata setup, system, and dictionary files 46158  17135 29023
Documentation files (public, by definition) 21824   21824
Restricted
(Each of these studies has at least one file that is not downloadable)
  Total Members Public
Studies 1740 128 1612
Datasets 8475 519 7956
Files 70293 5500 64793
ASCII data files 6251 486 5765
SAS setup and transport files 14186 1150 13036
SPSS setup, portable, and system files 10609 922 9687
Stata setup, system, and dictionary files 17268 1326 5942
Documentation files (public, by definition) 14548   14548
There were 187 new or updated ICPSR studies in Fiscal Year 2019.

Webinars

ICPSR broadcasted over 70 webinars with more than 400 attendees in fiscal year 2018-2019. They included: 

Webinar videos and slides are available on the ICPSR YouTube channel.

Membership Trends

ICPSR added 6 member institutions in fiscal year 2018-2019, ending the year with 785 total member institutions.

Web Presence

The ICPSR website had 82.5 percent New Visitors, 17.5 percent Returning Visitors, 838,625 Sessions, and 5,467,154 Page Views.
The 2018 Data Fair's theme was "Data: Powered by You." Presentations included "Beyond the Academy: Data Activism in our Communities," "Data Sharing Side Eye: Tackling Data Sharing With Communities Who Have Reason To Be Wary," "Data Transparency: Policies and Best Practices," and many more. There were new ways for people to participate in the 2018 Data Fair, such as a conference-wide whiteboard, Tweetchats, and a Facebook Premiere of our newest ICPSR 101 video: Why Should I Cite Data? The videos are all available on the 2018 Data Fair Playlist, and we also captured event highlights in a Twitter Moment.

Financial Report

ICPSR closed fiscal year 2019 with revenues totaling $17.3 million; representing a 13-percent increase from fiscal year 2018's total. Membership dues income increased 10 percent to $4.48 million and contributed 26 percent of the organization's total revenue. Sponsored project awards contributed $9.8 million and accounted for 58 percent of ICPSR's revenue. Summer Program revenue was $1.65 million for fiscal year 2019. ICPSR's overall expenses were $15.7 million, nearly the same as fiscal year 2018. The organization closed fiscal year 2019 with a surplus of $1,617,176. As of June 30, 2019, ICPSR maintains a total fund balance of $6,905,405.

Conferences

ICPSR attended 25 conferences, which included:

  • American Sociological Association
  • American Political Science Association
  • Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management
  • Child Care and Early Education Policy Research Consortium
  • American Public Health Association
  • Allied Social Sciences Associations/American Economic Association
  • American Society of Criminology
  • Gerontological Society of America’s 69th Annual Scientific Meeting
  • International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology

Top Downloads

Rank Study
1 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), 1994-2008 [Public Use]
2 Maternal Lifestyle Study in Four Sites in the United States, 1993-2011
3 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2001-2002
4 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 1999-2000
5 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2007-2008
6 Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data [United States]: 1975-1997
7 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2005-2006
8 Youth Development Study, 1988-2011 [St. Paul, Minnesota]
9 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2003-2004
10 The Family Life Project, Phase I, United States, September 2003-January 2008
11 American Community Survey (ACS): Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), 2005
12 American Community Survey (ACS): Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), 2007
13 India Human Development Survey-II (IHDS-II), 2011-12
14 American Community Survey (ACS): Three-Year Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), 2005-2007
15 Swedish Adoption/Twin Study on Aging (SATSA), 1984, 1987, 1990, 1993, 2004, 2007, and 2010

National Recognition

The Institute of Museum and Library Services announced in May 2019 that ICPSR was one of 10 recipients of the 2019 National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation's highest honor given to museums and libraries that make significant and exceptional contributions to their communities.

People

Ashley Doonan, Katey Pillars, Lindsay Blankenship, and Meghan Jacobs, a team of ICPSR data curators, were recognized for their outstanding efforts to develop data processing plans to implement ICPSR's new data curation levels. (Photo by Scott Campbell)
  • Tom Murphy, Director, Computer and Network Services, departed ICPSR in May 2019.
  • NACJD director Jukka Savolainen departed in Fall 2019 after accepting a position as Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Wayne State University.
  • Asmat Noori, Assistant Director, Computer and Network Services, departed in December 2018, transferring to the University of Michigan's Information Assurance (Campus IT Security) group.
  • Pamela Davis-Kean joined ICPSR as a Faculty Associate in mid-2019.
  • ICPSR Summer Program welcomed interim director Michael Traugott.
  • ICPSR welcomed new organizational and archive leaders A.J. Million, Allyson Flaster, Trisha Martinez, and John Lemmer.
  • ICPSR's Piper Simmons retired in July 2019. 
  • ICPSR's Alon Axelrod retired in May 2019. 
  • Dieter Burrell retired from ICPSR in Fall 2019. 
  • ICPSR's Paul Courant received one of the University of Michigan's top honors.
  • ICPSR announced recipients of the 2019 Warren E. Miller and William H. Flanigan awards.
  • Remembering former ICPSR project manager Darrell Donakowski.
  • Libby Hemphill in new class of Anti-Defamation League's Belfer Fellows.
  • Six new ICPSR Council members were elected at the 2019 ICPSR Biennial Meeting, including Dave Armstrong (Western University), James Doiron (University of Alberta), Kristin R. Eschenfelder (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Mark Hansen (Columbia University), Trevon Logan (Ohio State University), and Ken Smith (University of Utah). Those cycling off the Council included Chandra Muller (University of Texas at Austin), Christine L. Borgman (University of California, Los Angeles), Jane Fry (Carleton University), Verna Keith (University of Alabama at Birmingham), Robert Stine (University of Pennsylvania), Elizabeth Groff (Temple University), and Keith Whitfield (Wayne State University). Photo below from Fall 2019 meeting.
ICPSR Council Members gathered in Ann Arbor for their Fall 2019 meeting, which coincided with the 2019 ICPSR Biennial Meeting. Pictured, left to right, are Katherine Wallman, Esther Wilder, Elizabeth Groff, Verna Keith, ICPSR Director Margaret Levenstein, Bobray Bordelon, Lisa Cook, Michael Jones-Correa, Jane Fry, Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux, and Jon E. Cawthorne. (Photo by Scott Campbell)