The Development of Software to Facilitate Use of Archived Data Sets

IASSIST Quarterly A variety of forces have converged to promote research based on secondary analysis of existing social science data sets. A growing number of federal agencies have officially encouraged data sharing by requesting, often requiring, that their grantees place data sets collected with public funds in the public domain. At the same time, declines in university and federal researc h budgets have put expensive primary data collection out of the reach of many social scientists. Advances in microcomputer technology have allowed powerful data analyses to be performed quickly and economically. Data archive centers dedicated to the preparation of data sets for public use have also begun to emerge.