Data Archive Search Hints and Examples

This page provides some methods for performing keyword, phrase, and Boolean OR / AND functions when running a data archive search. See the examples elsewhere on this page for searching individual fields. The compound search page allows searching on multiple fields.

When searching the catalog, remember that subject searching is limited to words in the title. Our holdings records have no abstracts or subject headings. To browse studies by subject, view our holdings by subject categories.

Searching for a single word or term

Keyword searching for a single term automatically truncates words you enter. Therefore, searching on the word volunteer also finds volunteer, volunteers, volunteering. However, there are times when you may not want the terms truncated. To eliminate unwanted truncation, append \b to the term. (Conversely, append \B to the term to retrieve only truncated words.)

Your search term:	These terms are retrieved:	To disable truncation, enter:
india	India, Indian, Indians, Indiana	india\b
mali	Mali, Somalia	mali\b
roper	Roper, property	roper\b

Phrase searching

Searching for a phrase is assumed when you enter words that are adjacent to each other. Note that the last term (but only the last term) in a phrase will be automatically truncated. for example, searching for exit poll retrieves exit poll or exit polls.

You enter:	These results are retrieved:
virginia slims	Virginia Slims Women's Opinion Polls
income dynamic	Panel Study of Income Dynamics
county business pattern	County Business Patterns

Boolean searching (OR)

To search for one term OR another term OR both, place a "pipe" symbol between each term. Remember that single terms and the last word of each phrase you enter will be automatically truncated.

You enter:	These results are retrieved:
contracept\|pregnan	Fertility and Contraception Among Low-income Child Abusing and Neglecting Mothers National Health Interview Survey, 1991: Pregnancy and Smoking Supplement
young men\|young women	National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience: Young Women Young Men in High School and Beyond

Boolean searching (AND)

To search for one term AND the other in the same field, place a period and asterisk (.*) between terms with no spaces. However, the two terms must be in the order in which they're listed. For example, trade.*protection will retrieve the phrase "trade and economic protection" but not the phrase "protection of trade." The differences are illustrated in the search examples below.

You enter:	These results are retrieved:
child abuse	Substantiation of Child Abuse and Neglect Reports
child.*abuse	Los Angeles Times Poll 98: Child Sexual Abuse, July 1985
abuse.*child	Impact of the Court Process on Sexually Abused Children in North Carolina, 1983-1986

Combining OR and AND

Here are some examples of how the OR ( | ) and AND (.*) sequences can be combined. Note the different results when searching for a phrase and using the AND strategy.

Your search strategy:	Number of titles found:	Sample titles retrieved:
county population	3	County Population Estimates by Age, Sex, and Race
county.*population	4	Selected County-level Variables from the Fourth Count 1970 Census of Population and Housing
population.*county	35	Population Estimates by County with Components of Change
county.population\|population.county	39

Explanations of the Fields

Title

Each study is assigned a title that is usually derived from the documentation or other print information. This title may include descriptive words indicating content, geographic focus, chronological year(s) of coverage, source of information, major sponsor, and sequence numbers. Searching for subject keywords is limited to the title field, because catalog entries do not contain abstracts or subject headings.

You want to find:	Ways you can search this:
unemployment rates in states	unemployment.*state
North American Free Trade Agreement	nafta north american free trade

Principal Investigator

The Principal Investigator for data is the equivalent to the author for books. It is the person, persons, or agency responsible for the dataset's intellectual content or for initiating the study.

You want to find:	Ways you can search this:
studies by Lewis Terman	terman, lewis
data from the Federal Election Commission	federal election commision\|fec
Cable News Network	cable news network\|cnn

The differences among a principal investigator, producer, and data distributor aren't always clear. Consider the example of the Annual Survey of the Public's Attitudes Toward The Public Schools.

Principal investigator	Phi Delta Kappa Initiated the survey, determined what topics and issues to investigate, and underwrote the cost.
Producer	Gallup Organization Constructed the poll, selected the sample, collated and packaged the data for distribution and analysis.
Distributor [this field is not searchable in our catalog]	Roper Center for Public Opinion Research Stores and maintains the data and supporting documentation. Makes the dataset available for sale and distribution.

Producer

The producer field contains information similar to the publisher of a book. The producer is the person or agency with financial or administrative responsibility for the physical processes of creating the data file. The producer field includes the place of production, the name of the person or agency, and, when known, the date of production.

You want to find:	Suggested search strategies:
data generated by Statistics Canada	statistics canada
studies conducted by Gallup or Roper polling organizations	gallup\|roper\b

ICPSR Number

Many of the files in the Data Archive have been acquired through Cornell's membership in the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. If we obtained the data from ICPSR, you can use that study number to search for the study.

You want to find:	To search for this study:
Correlates of Crime: A Study of 52 Nations, 1960-1984. First ICPSR Edition (ICPSR 9258)	9258
Wages of War, 1816-1980. First ICPSR Edition (ICPSR 9044)	9044

CISER Codebook Number

The Data Archive assigns its own codebook numbers for each study or group of studies that use the same documentation. These "numbers" consist of a mnemonic for broad subject categories (e.g. ED for Education) and a number. You can browse a list of subject categories and codebook mnemonics to become familiar with our classification system.

You want to find:	Ways to search for this using codebook number:
Current Population Survey: February	cph-002
Euorbarometers	pub-053
County Business Patterns	econ-076

Explanation of the Search Results

Bibliographic Citation

This contains basic information about the name and authorship of each study and includes title, edition, principal investigator, producer, ICPSR study number, and CISER codebook or CD-ROM number. The citation may include a a distributor statement, the agency from which CISER obtained the data. [Where the producer and distributor are the same, there is no distributor statement.] In addition, there may be technical notes regarding the source of the data, special structures, potential problems with using the files, or restrictions on their use.

File Information

Each study in our collection is composed of one or more files. This includes the title of the study and information about each file:

a brief title for each file
the year or years covered by that file within the study
the file name, including the full path name of the directory in which it is located
the type of file; for example: data, codebook, file layout, SAS or SPSS program statements
the record length of the longest record in the file (LRECL)
the record format: constant- or variable-length records,
the number of records in the file
the size of the file (compressed and uncompressed)

CISER Data Archive