THE INTER-UNIVERSITY CONSORTIUM FOR POLITICAL AND SOCIAL RESEARCH

Abstract

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, one of the oldest and largest archives of digital social science data in the world, would like to make researchers aware of the upcoming new availability of important data in the fields of HIV/AIDS and alcohol and drug addiction. Under five subcontracts approved this spring, ICPSR will provide access to data from the following research projects through its National Addiction & HIV Data Archive Program (NAHDAP), via funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse: the Center for Education and Drug Abuse Research (CEDAR) at the University of Pittsburgh the Oregon Youth Substance Use (OYSUP) project at the Oregon Research Institute the Older Drug User Study at Kennesaw State University in Georgia the Enhanced Linkage of Drug Abusers to Primary Medical Care project at Boston Medical Center the archiving of two Chicago NIDA-funded epidemiological surveys at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Each one-year subcontract involves the participating studies receiving funds to process and prepare their data for public distribution. At the end of the contracts, the data will be publicly available through the NAHDAP Web site. All of the studies were funded by the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, and will become part of the NAHDAP archive when completed. The data in these studies potentially contain hugely important insights into the dynamics of addiction and HIV. By making them available to the wider research community for secondary analysis, we hope to facilitate significant advancements in these fields. NAHDAP's innovative subcontracting system advances the goal of promoting the wide dissemination of research data on drug and alcohol abuse by providing financial incentives as well as training in data processing to the participating studies. Typically, data would be processed by NAHDAP staff—under these contracts, staff from the participating research centers will be trained in data processing so that data from subsequent research projects can be more easily deposited with ICPSR and disseminated to the public. The hope is that these contracts will help build a sustainable infrastructure of data dissemination, while at the same time making important data available to the research community. NAHDAP is part of the Inter-university Consortium of Political and Social Rearch. Established in 1962, ICPSR is one of the oldest and largest archives of digital social science data. Providing a unique combination of data holdings, user support, and training in quantitative methods, ICPSR is a vital resource for fostering inquiry and furthering the social sciences. ICPSR, a membership-based organization with nearly 700 members, is a unit of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. More information on NAHDAP is available at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/NAHDAP.