ICPSR Codebook Elements

Please note we also use formatting tags in a number of elements. Formatting tags include:

• paragraph

• list, list type, list item

• link

• emphasis (bold or italic)

• heading, heading level

Document Level

• data XML file was last updated

• administrative notes (such as, “suppress frequency display for variable V101”); we put all display choices in one section so that it’s easy to transfer those notes to updated files

• producer and copyright

Study Level

• citation elements

• title, subtitle, alternate title, acronym

• investigator name and affiliation

• date released & date updated

• version number

• doi

• agency-specific IDs

• series name

• funding agency and grant numbers

• subject terms

• geographic terms, smallest geographic unit

• summary/abstract

• time period and date of collection

• unit of analysis

• universe

• sampling notes

• kind of data

• mode of data collection

• data source

• notes on weights

• summary of changes made while processing the data

• response rate

• presence of common scales

• terms of use

• availability status / notes on restrictions

• disclaimer

• version history (log of substantive changes)

File Level

• case count

• number of variables

• mime type

• file type (what program is the file used in)

• file size

• id

• file name (both literal and human readable)

Variable Level

• variable groups

• id

• label

• id

• name

• nature (ordinal, nominal)

• label

• question / text

• universe / notes

• response categories

• code

• label / text

• frequency (as count and as percent)

• missing (Y/N)

• missing type (system missing vs. item missing)

• summary statistics

• valid/invalid range

• location in file

• format