Useful Guides
Guide to Finding Data
Quantitative Data Analysis Software
The following professional-grade software packages allow you to manipulate and visualize quantitative data in very complex ways:
- SAS - Powerful statistical analysis and data management tool, uses command-line interface, particularly good for ANOVA
- SPSS - Relatively sophisticated data analysis tool, with a user-friendly GUI, geared toward quantitative social sciences data
- R - Free, versatile option for data analysis and visualization
Each of these statistical packages are available through CUNY Virtual Desktop, except for R, which is downloadable from http://www.r-project.org/
How do I choose?
Choosing statistical software (online video, 36 minutes)
Brief comparison between SAS, STATA, and SPSS (PDF)
Choosing the correct statistical test in SAS, STATA, SPSS, and R Institute for Digital Education & Research, UCLA)
ICPSR: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research
CUNY is a member of ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Reseach), a data archive that specializes in long term preservation. CUNY staff, students, and faculty have access to the extensive ICPSR data holdings and other member services such as data curation, data management expertise, and resources for teaching with data.
- ICPSR: Interuniversity Consortium for Political & Social ResearchICPSR, the world's largest collection of digital social science data, maintains a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. ICPSR data cover sociology, political science, economics, demography, education, child care, health care, crime, minority populations, aging, terrorism, substance abuse, mental health, public policy, international relations, and more. First-time users will be asked to create an ICPSR MyData account; thereafter, you will need your email address and password to download data.
