DPLS News DPLS News contains articles about local, national,
and international data issues.
It is published twice a semester by the library staff.
Editor: Joanne Juhnke, Associate Special Librarian
Contributors:Lu Chou, Senior Special Librarian, Jay Dougherty, Library
Assistant, & Cindy Severt, Senior Special Librarian
The PCBS came into being in 1993 in the wake of the Oslo accords. The agency
was founded with donations from the EU, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden.
The U.S. made a much smaller contribution. The agency has continued on donatedfunding,
although thePalestinian Authority did provide 30% of funding in 1999 and 2000.
Information about the PCBS and their work is available at their web site, at
http://www.pcbs.org/.
From 1967 to 1993, the only source for census and social-survey information
about Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had been the Israeli Central Bureau
of Statistics, online at http://www.cbs.gov.il/engindex.htm.
The establishment of a national statistics bureau for the Palestinian Authority
with multinational backing provided an important new source for describing Palestinian
demography, economy, and society.
The overnight December 5th raid lasted six hours and involved every room of
the five-story PCBS office headquarters. Israeli soldiers detained the Bureau’s
guards for the length of the incident. Photographs of the aftermath are available
on the PCBS website at
http://www.pcbs.org/events/event4/photo.htm.
On December 7, the Jerusalem Post reported on the incident, saying, “Soldiers
confiscated a large number of documents and computer discs showing the Palestinian
Authority’s support of terrorism.” The PCBS strongly disputes the
claim that any such evidence was found, calling for an independent commission
to review the materials. A PCBS press release also expressed the belief that
“the IDF was probably looking for confidential data on individuals, their
addresses, background characteristics, and political orientations. The IDF might
have wrongly assumed that such information is available at PCBS, being in charge
of the Voter (sic) register, population register, and census records.”
International press coverage of the break-in was minimal with only the Agence
France Presse among international news agencies reporting on the story. However,
the incident does highlight the the strategic importance of impartial, confidential
national data, which can be a tempting target from various angles. From the
point of view of opposing forces, undercutting an opponent’s ability to
describe and quantify themselves could be a heavy blow. Confidential government
data can also come under pressure from internal forces, as described elsewhere
in this newsletter.
In the coming months DPLS will continue to seek out and share information on statistical issues related to political unrest worldwide.
Covered employment and wages, MSA levels:
Annual averages/totals through 4-digit SIC codes by ownership, 1988-1999 (private
sector only).
Annual averages/totals through 4-digit SIC codes by ownership, 1984-1987 (private
sector only).
Annual averages/totals through 2-digit SIC codes by ownership, 1975-1983 (private
sector only).
Covered employment and wages, county levels:
Annual averages/totals through 4-digit SIC codes by ownership, 1994-1999.
Annual averages/totals through 4-digit SIC codes by ownership, 1988-1993.
Annual averages/totals through 4-digit SIC codes by ownership, 1984-1987.
Annual averages/totals through 2-digit SIC codes by ownership, 1975-1983.
Also recently acquired is the Cross-national time-series database (CNTS).
Jay will be assuming some of the Webmaster and editor duties currently peformed by Associate Special Librarian Joanne Juhnke who will go on maternity leave at any moment! Congratulations, Joanne!
Are
you a researcher whose projects result in machine-readable data? Based on the
premise that high quality data, once generated, should be fully and effectively
exploited by as many researchers as possible, many granting agencies require
researchers to archive data collected as a result of funded projects. Whether
or not your collected data is grant supported or the end result of a research
project, DPLS can ensure its longevity.
DPLS has a long tradition of assisting investigators in the production and preservation of public use files so that the data can be distributed and used. Starting with a checklist inventory of items necessary for archiving, DPLS will take responsibility for the preservation of the data on external media. DPLS can then disseminate the data via its online archive, http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/archive.html or via some other method depending on access restrictions.
On October 26 of 2001, President Bush signed into law the USA-PATRIOT Act,
short for “Uniting and Strengthening America By Providing Appropriate Tools
Required To Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.” The 376-page document was
broadly described as allowing authorities to use more overseas intelligence
information, allowing for longer detentions of suspects who are not U.S. citizens
and expanding wiretapping authority.
Among the expanded authorities granted by the act is a little-publicized clause
that amends confidentiality requirements for statistical databases of student
information. Section 508 of the USA-PATRIOT Act allows law enforcement to access
the student data collected for the purpose of statistical research under the
National Education Statistics Act (NESA), impacting data held by the National
Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The new standard requires a simple court
order, to be issued based on a certification that the records are relevant to
an investigation.
To date the new standards for NESA data have not been used, and it may prove that the subject will not come up. However, given the bad memories of the misuse of U.S. census data for internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, it will be important to monitor the extent to which “confidential” retains its meaning with regard to government survey data.
Since the events of September 11, a number of formerly pressing issues have
been put on the proverbial backburner. One of these issues, the controversy
over the 2000 Presidential Election, is still in the minds of many Americans.
Recently, NORC (National Opinion Research Center) based at the University of
Chicago released the results of their findings regarding the election. NORC
was contracted by a number of major media organizations, including The New
York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post Co.,
Tribune Publishing, CNN, Associated Press, St. Petersburg
Times and The Palm Beach Post, to provide a fair and impartial inventory
of all uncounted votes in Florida in the 2000 Election.
The data archive, now available at http://www.norc.org/fl/results/index.html, contains files available in SAS, SPSS, and ASCII. There is also a Florida Vote Tabulator in MS-Access. Users can check out the overall NORC web site concerning the 2000 Presidential election at http://www.norc.org/fl/index.asp.
The ANES National Election Studies Cumulative Data File, 1948-2000 can be downloaded
from the NES web site at http://www.umich.edu/~nes.
This collection pools common variables from each of the biennial National Election
Studies conducted since 1948. The file is still limited to the Time-Series data
collections, including the pre-/post-Election study in presidential election
years and the Post-Election study in midterm years.
The NES staff has recoded the variables so that the same question asked over the years has the same variable number and the same coding scheme for each of the election studies. The election studies are designed to present data on Americans’ social backgrounds, enduring political predispositions, social and political values, perceptions and evaluations of groups and candidates, opinions on questions of public policy, and participation in political life.
Internet
Corner The Center for the Study of Democracy provides a unique look into social attitudes
throughout the world as well as various election surveys. The web site contains
the first national, scientifically sampled survey regarding political and social
attitudes in Vietnam which the center conducted in conjunction with the Institute
for Human Studies. Other studies on the site include The World Values Survey
which polled people in 50 different nations about basic values and beliefs.
It also includes the 1996 American Black Election Survey regarding African-American
political beliefs. Studies are available through Excel spreadsheets as well
as a variety of downloadable portable formats including SPSS.
The Center for the Study of Democracy main page is available at http://hypatia.ss.uci.edu/democ/archive.htm.
For those interested in obtaining and trading data related to land management
and land records, the GeoCommunicator web site is an excellent resource. Provided
by the United States Bureau of Land Management, the GeoCommunicator offers features
such as a communication forum in which interested parties can find and share
data related to land management and records. Also included in the site are a
geocom explorer which allows users to access a wide variety of geographic information.
Search capability allows users to look up information about various areas of
land through a variety of means, and lets the user narrow the search to their
liking. It also provides various maps as well as a means to publish data through
forums on the web site.
UK2002-The Official Yearbook of the United Kingdom offers a plethora of information concerning Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Included in the site are maps (available in PDF) and a variety of information related to demographics within the U.K. The site also includes summaries of the government’s policy on a range of U.K. issues including agriculture, the environment, trade, social policy, etc. The yearbook is available in PDF. Maps and spreadsheets can be downloaded separately, but the yearbook is only available as one document.
The main page of UK 2002-The Official Yearbook of the United Kingdom is located at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=5703&More=N.
2001 Data and Program Library Service, University of Wisconsin-Madison