By Kari Williams
In Minneapolis, MN at IPUMS HQ, the days are getting shorter, the nights are getting cooler, and school supplies are on sale in retail stores. Whether you approach “Back to School” season with enthusiasm, dread, or a mixture of the two, we want to remind you that IPUMS has great resources for students, faculty, and researchers!
Students
If you’re new to working with data, IPUMS provides a platform to create customized files of clean and well documented data from large-scale population sources in the US and around the world. There are video tutorials that demonstrate how to use the IPUMS websites and documentation, as well as sample exercises that walk you through requesting a custom data file and working with it in the stats package of your choosing. For students who are grappling with a nuance in the data or technical documentation, remember you can email the IPUMS User Support team with questions at any time!
Faculty
We offer topically-focused data training exercises to help your students familiarize themselves with the IPUMS websites, and we provide how-to video tutorials and introductory webinars on various IPUMS data collections. If your students don’t have access to or training in statistical software, consider directing them to our online tabulator, which can be used with data from IPUMS USA, IPUMS CPS, IPUMS International, IPUMS DHS, IPUMS NHIS, and IPUMS Time Use (ATUS, MTUS, AHTUS). Additionally, we have specialized training resources for leveraging the panel aspect of the Current Population Survey and for working with Time Use data.
Researchers
Whether you are a student, faculty member, independent researcher, journalist, data analyst, government official, or anyone else interested in using data, check out our teaching and learning resources to jump start your work with IPUMS data. These large-scale population data are suitable for addressing many research questions, and our work reduces the time you need to spend cleaning and preparing the data for your analysis. If you’re interested in further streamlining work using IPUMS data, check out our API program, which allows you to submit custom data file requests programmatically rather than navigating through the websites.
Onward
We’re eager to support your work using IPUMS data, from your first data extract to your thousandth. Share feedback on existing resources and ideas for what else would be useful to you, your collaborators, or your students by emailing ipums@umn.edu. Mark your calendars for our upcoming Virtual Office Hours session on Wednesday, September 18, 10:00-11:30 AM CDT and drop in to get your questions answered by IPUMS data experts.
