Reference Department - Data Services

Contact Michele

Davis Library
Reference Department
UNC-Chapel Hill CB# 3922
Chapel Hill, NC 27515-8890
Fax (919) 962-5537

Term	Definition
Data	plural of the word datum; compilation of numbers which may contain trends but must be analyzed to find them
Decennial	every ten years; the U.S. census is conducted decennially in years ending in zero, e.g., 1790, 1800, 1810...1990, 2000, 2010, etc.
ICPSR	the Inter-university Consortium for Political & Social Research, one of the oldest data repositories in the U.S. UNC affiliates may download data directly from the ICPSR web site. First-time users must create logins. When logins are used from on-campus they are automatically authorized to download data from off-campus.
Longitudinal study	in survey research, a study conducted with the same study population at intervals over an extended period of time
Statistics	"sound-bytes" of data; numbers that describe trends identified by analyzing data
Time-series study	in survey research, a study conducted over an extended period of time which collects the data in the same way each time in order for the variables collected at different times to be comparable to one another.