ICPSR Codebook Elements

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