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Editor: Joanne Juhnke, Special Librarian November 2005
Newspaper Audience Database (NADbase) Data in the Wake of the Hurricane The photos and personal stories conveyed the initial impact of the devastation, as hurricane after hurricane battered the southeastern United States this fall. For a more wide-ranging assessment, however, personal accounts give way to data, for implementing relief efforts and building the groundwork for ongoing recovery. U.S. Census data about New Orleans and the surrounding areas has been in heavy demand since Hurricane Katrina hit. A prominent new page on the Census Bureau web site, at http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2005/katrina.htm, links to data on economy, housing, population, and transportation for areas affected by major hurricanes of 2005. The American Community Survey in 2004 had covered the New Orleans metropolitan area, as well as Mobile County, AL and the Biloxi/Gulfport/Pascagoula, MS metropolitan area. The Bureau also managed a three-week-early release of the September 2005 export and import data for districts in the hurricane-affected region. The demand for hurricane-related data has boosted the Census Bureau during a round of threatened budget cuts. In June the Senate Appropriations Committee had approved a budget proposal $150 million below the Bush Administration’s request for the Census Bureau. Prominent among the arguments for restoring the funding was the importance of Census data, particularly the American Community Survey, for disaster recovery efforts. As of this writing, the House and Senate have agreed on a much smaller cut. Post-hurricane opinion polls have flourished in the past months, becoming available through the Roper Center and other sources (see also the article on RoperExpress, p. 2). One survey of particular interest at Roper, conducted by the Gallup organization from late September to early October, polled Hurricane Katrina survivors about their experiences and opinions in the wake of the disaster. Post-hurricane efforts have also relied heavily on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data. The September and October issues of the GIS Monitor newsletter, at http://www.gismonitor.com/news/newsletter/archive/index.php, carried an ongoing series on GIS collaborations in the days and weeks after Katrina. Geospatial responses to the hurricane included government agencies (such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, and NASA); academic institutions (such as San Diego State University and Louisiana State University), and commercial organizations (such as ESRI and GeoFusion). Some of the freely-available online results of those efforts include:
All Aboard the RoperExpress! DPLS is pleased to announce that our subscription to the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research now includes RoperExpress. Similar to ICPSR Direct, RoperExpress allows for unlimited direct downloads of Roper data from any UW-Madison workstation. Access is controlled by IP authentication which does not require a password, only an initial email registration. Off-campus logins via proxy server will be available soon. The Roper Center catalog, iPOLL and many other online sources can be linked to from DPLS' page of Data Quick Picks, http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/bigsources.html. It is now possible to move directly from a question in iPOLL into Roper’s catalog to acquire the codebook and data without having to contact DPLS to make a request, except for those studies not yet available via RoperExpress. If a dataset is not available for direct download, DPLS staff will be happy to help. DPLS staff would also like to remind users that the usual conditions for Roper data use still apply. By downloading data, you signify that you agree not to redistribute data to other individuals, institutions, or organizations. Publications based on Roper Center data should acknowledge the data sources by means of standard bibliographic citations. New From ICPSR The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), with its immense archive of social science data for research and instruction, has recently announced several new services. ICPSR’s searchable Bibliography of Data-Related Literature, at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/citations/, has for several years provided a large database of citations to literature resulting from the analysis of ICPSR data. Now a new service creates the link between the citation and the full text of the article, for journals to which UW-Madison subscribes online. Below each article citation, a "Check full-text availability" link appears. Clicking the link will lead to the UW-Madison FindIt service, which in turn provides links to the full text of the article if it is available online at UW-Madison, as well as a link to search for the journal in the MadCat online library catalog. In October, ICPSR announced a new update notification service for those who download ICPSR data. Users who enroll in this notification service will automatically receive e-mail notices when a study that they previously downloaded is substantively updated. To sign up for update notification, log in to your MyData account at the ICPSR web site (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/), and choose the Notification Services link. You can use the same link to reset your account if you choose to stop receiving the notifications. Also announced this fall: the ICPSR-hosted web site for SETUPS (Supplementary Empirical Teaching Units in Political Science), at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/SETUPS/. Sponsored jointly by ICPSR and the American Political Science Association (APSA), the SETUPS site features Voting Behavior: The 2004 Election, an instructional module created by Charles Prysby and Carmine Scavo. The module offers students the opportunity to analyze an accessible dataset drawn from the 2004 National Election Study (NES). The site also carries a discussion of voting behavior and the background to the 2004 election, along with exercises explaining how to analyze the data and understand the results. United Nations Comtrade Database UW-Madison has subscribed to UN Comtrade, an international commodities trade database at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/comtrade/. Every year approximately 130 countries or areas report their merchandise trade statistics to the United Nations. The market share of these reporting countries together covers from 90% to 95% of world trade. Each country reports by commodity and trading partner. Five key variables in this database are Reporter, Commodity, Partner, Year and Trade Flow (imports, exports or re-exports). Comtrade has all reported data in their original classification as well as converting data to all possible UN classifications: Broad Economic Categories (BEC), the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) and the Harmonized System (HS).
As the name implies, WebSurvey@UW is a new service offered by DoIT that allows faculty and staff with an active NetID to conduct online surveys of the UW constituency. Surveys can be created from scratch or copied from an existing survey. WebSurvey@UW offers up to 21 question types as well as options for logos, colors, and other customized features. Surveys can be posted on a website or sent via email. Results are automatically generated in a report format, but can also be further analyzed in Excel or SPSS. Pricing runs from $50 per year for one survey with up to 5,000 respondents; to $300 per year for multiple surveys with up to 10,000 respondents. Note that WebSurvey@UW is one of several survey services on campus including the UW Survey Center, the Office of Testing and Evaluation Services, and the LEAD Center. For more information, go to http://www.doit.wisc.edu/websurvey/.
DPLS will be closed the following days for the upcoming holidays:
Happy Holidays! Crossroads Corner Crossroads Corner highlights web sites recently added to the searchable Internet Crossroads in Social Science Data on the DPLS web site. Newspaper Audience Database (NADbase) In October 2005 the Newspaper Association of America launched a new initiative, the Newspaper Audience Database (NADbase) at http://www.naa.org/nadbase/. The database reports on readership, website statistics and demographic data for the largest 100-plus newspapers in the top 75 U.S. markets. Each newspaper’s print readership numbers are broken down by gender, age group, household income level and total reach within their designated market areas. The numbers also include average weekday readership, cumulative weekday readership, Sunday readership and readership over four consecutive Sundays, in addition to newspapers’ website “unique audience” and “pageviews” over a 30-day period as tracked by Nielsen/NetRatings. The semi-annual releases can be downloaded in either PDF or Excel. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) IFPRI is a research center of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. In support of its mission to provide policy solutions that cut hunger and malnutrition, IFPRI conducts research and secondary analysis in collaboration with other institutions worldwide. Many of the resulting datasets are freely available on the IFPRI web site at http://www.ifpri.org/data/data_menu.asp. After a required free registration, users receive a download link via e-mail. Data listed on the IFPRI site includes:
American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) The ACSI is an economic indicator measuring “household consumption experience” according to the web site at http://www.theacsi.org/overview.htm. Produced by the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and the American Society for Quality, the survey interviews 65,000 consumers annually and asks them to evaluate goods and services purchased. The responses are then used to produce the index at four levels: national, 10 economic sectors, 41 industries, and 200 companies. Scores for each of these levels, back to the baseline year of 1994, are available as HTML tables on the ACSI site. The SchoolMatters web site, sponsored by Standard & Poor's, declares that its purpose is to "give policymakers, educators, and parents the tools they need to make better-informed decisions that improve student performance." To do this, the site at http://www.schoolmatters.com/ provides a searchable database covering the United States at three levels: state, school district, and school. The content covers student performance; spending, revenue, and taxes; school environment; and community demographics. Data are compiled from various surveys from the National Center for Education Statistics; state departments of education; the U.S. Census Bureau; and college preparatory test vendors. A "Compare" tool allows users to create a downloadable side-by-side comparison of key performance information for up to 5 states, districts, or schools, while a "Create Your Own Table" tool allows users to create a customized table to download for up to 100 schools or school districts across a set of key indicators. An October 6 press release from Standard & Poor's announced the addition of 2003-04 and 2004-05 Wisconsin-specific data to the database, including proficiency rates on state-administered reading and math tests. |
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