Developing an aggregated survey/macro-economic database for statistical and graphical social science applications

Abstract

The Survey Research Center at The University of Michigan has routinely conducted surveys of consumer attitudes since 1946. The May 1981 survey is the 152nd in this series which provides regular assessments of consumer attitudes and expectations. The surveys are designed to explore why changes in consumer attitudes and expectations occur, and how these changes influence consumer spending and saving decisions. A major research objective of the project is to use this collected data to evaluate economic trends and prospects.Each survey contains "standard" questions asked at regular intervals, many of which have been included from the project's inception. The aggregated results of these surveys provide a wealth of time-series data with the potential to be an important factor in forecasting consumer behavior. The "standard" questions themselves can be disseminated into approximately 190 separate data series (including index transformations). When "nonstandard" (or non-core) questions are included, this total jumps considerably. With such a large number of data variables, many different areas of analysis are available to be researched. When the many macro-economic data series (e.g., Federal Reserve, Census, or Retail Sales data) are added to this compilation, the data management problems increase. The research results which could be achieved, then, are directly related to the development of a flexible method of data storage and retrieval.