Data Communication Scholarship at ICPSR

2025 ICPSR Data Communication Scholarship

Times are changing, and so is the ICPSR Research Paper Competition. Since 2007, the annual competition has showcased undergraduate and graduate students’ research papers that have used data archived at ICPSR.

Winners from ICPSR’s member institutions have covered topics from “Testing the Theory of Rational Crime with United States Data, 1994-2002” in 2007 to “Does (Trans)Gender Identity Complicate the Relationship between Education and Self-Rated Health?” in 2022. 

Now, we’re excited to announce that the ICPSR Research Paper Competition is transitioning to the ICPSR Data Communication Scholarship. Starting in November 2023, students from ICPSR member institutions can apply for the scholarship. Instead of the traditional research paper format, ICPSR is recognizing students for creating videos about ICPSR data! "We not only want students using our data, but we want to empower the next generation of data advocates," said Linda Detterman, ICPSR's Membership and Communications Director.

Learning Objectives

After completing this project, students should be able to:

• Use the ICPSR search tools to find data on a topic of interest to them.
• Drill down into the information about a study to determine: 
• The basics: What was the study about? Why was the research conducted, and what topics were covered?
• Methodological concepts: Who was in the sample and how were they selected to participate? When and how were the data collected, and was the study part of a larger data collection effort (e.g., longitudinal, repeated cross-section, data collected from more than one ‘source’ [e.g., school, teachers, parents, and kids])?
• Other details: Who were the investigators? Was the research funded and by whom? Are the data members-only or available to all, what is the data citation
• Examine related publications to see what has been done with the data
• Synthesize the information to identify research topics for which the data are well suited
• Create an “advertisement” about the data, highlighting the key features of the study

Deadline

Feb. 23, 2025, at Midnight, ET

Submissions

What to Submit: 

1. An entry form that includes information about the submitter(s) and the data.
2. The link to a video, no longer than 3 minutes in length, that describes an ICPSR study that gives the viewer a “run down” of the important points and a glimpse at potential uses. Details about what to include can be found in the “Preparing Your Entry” section.

Example video

Not sure where to start? Here's an example video to help spark your creativity as you prepare your ICPSR Data Communication Scholarship video. This student-produced example video uses animation software, but feel free to use any available tools, including your voice and cell phone camera. Have fun!

About the Scholarship

Students from ICPSR member institutions are eligible to win scholarships of $1,000 (first place) or $750 (second place) for creating a short video to promote a study in the ICPSR catalog. Realizing that coursework requirements and assignments have changed since the ICPSR Paper Competition was launched in 2007, we are giving the competition a major facelift to better match what students are being asked to do in an era of more creative, less traditional assignments. Upon completing the video, students should have gained experience navigating and searching ICPSR, identifying data of interest, and using the information provided for each study to determine potential uses of the data.

Preparing Your Entry

The Fine Print

1. To be eligible, students must attend a school that is a member of ICPSR. If you are unsure whether your school is a member, please check the member list.
2. Students entering the competition must graduate or have graduated no earlier than April 1 of the year prior to submission. For example, students entering in 2025 have to graduate April 1, 2024, or later.
3. Studies chosen for the videos must be part of ICPSR's curated collection. Specifically, studies found in OpenICPSR and studies with a description that contains a link to another site from which to get the data are not eligible. Note: some study description pages point to the project’s website for further description – that’s okay, as long as you can download the data from the ICPSR page (clicking on download lists files in formats such as SPSS, Stata, SAS, R, and ASCII or CSV as well as documentation files).
4. Studies chosen should be “members-only.” Studies in this category have a note on the right side of the study homepage that looks like this:
   These are the studies that your institution helped make available!
5. We encourage you to search all of the collection, but you can also start your search with only the eligible studies.

The Steps

1. Think about a topic you are interested in and might like to conduct research on.
2. Use the search tools on icpsr.umich.edu to see what ICPSR has related to that topic. You can start by looking for studies about your topic, studies that contain questions (variables) related to that topic, or research that has been published about your topic. Results for all three types of searches appear on the Search Results page so you don’t need to redo your search to switch from one to the other. You may need to expand or narrow your search based on the results. 
3. Find a few studies that look interesting to you. Click on the title to get to the “study homepage” where you will find additional information about the data. Once you find one that you think you want to use for your video, try to answer the questions below based on the information on the study homepage and in the codebook, and any other documentation provided.
4. Create a video of no more than 3 minutes that captures the important points about the study you chose. You might frame the video by thinking about it as a “commercial” for the data – highlighting any special features – or what you would tell a researcher interested in learning more about the data. Be creative, but keep in mind what you know about social research. 
5. Fill out the entry form and include the link to your video!

How to Approach the Data

Your task for this scholarship opportunity is not to analyze the data, but to learn as much about it as you possibly can and to share that information with other social scientists in an engaging way. No problem, right?!?

Make sure you learn and assess:

• What is the purpose of the study – why were the data originally collected?
• Who carried out the study and did they appear to have funding to do so? If yes, from whom? 
• What topic areas are covered in the data?
• Who is in the sample and how were they selected?
• When and how were the data collected?
• Was this a one-time data collection or was it part of a larger project with ongoing data collection? 
• What was the source of the data (e.g., individual adults, an adult representing a household, records from an employer, newspaper stories)?
• Are the data restricted (do you have to apply for access)?
• What has been done with the data already?
• What are the strengths of these data that might set them apart from other studies? Are there any limitations?