icpsrdata: Reproducible Data Retrieval from the ICPSR Archive
The Inter-university Consortium
for Political and Social Research, in its own words, “provides
leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of
analysis for the social science research community.” The ICPSR data
archive stores thousands of datasets on a wide range of topics.
Researchers taking advantage of these datasets, however, are caught in a
bind. The terms and conditions for downloading any ICPSR dataset state
that one agrees “not to redistribute data or other materials without the
written agreement of ICPSR.”1 But to ensure that one’s work can be
reproduced, assessed, and built upon by others, one must provide access
to the raw data one employed. The icpsrdata package cuts
this knot by providing programmatic, reproducible access to ICPSR’s
datasets from within R.
Setup
When used interactively, the icpsr_download function
will be ask for the login information required by ICPSR: the user’s
email and password. After that information is input once, it will be
entered automatically for any other download requests made in the same
session.
To change this contact information within a session, one may set the
argument reset to TRUE when running
icpsr_download again, and the function will again request
the required information.
An optional, but highly recommended, setup step is to add the login information ICPSR requires to your .Rprofile as in the following example:
options("icpsr_email" = "[email protected]",
"icpsr_password" = "password123!")The icpsr_download function will then access the
information it needs to pass on to ICPSR by default. This means that
researchers will not have to expose their info in their R scripts and
that others reproducing their results later will be able to execute
those R scripts without modification. (They will, however, need to enter
their own information into their own .Rprofiles, a detail that should be
noted in the reproducibility materials to avoid confusion.)
Use
The icpsr_download function (1) simulates a visit to the
website of the specified ICPSR dataset (2) enters the required
information and agrees to the terms and conditions of the download, (3)
downloads the dataset’s files, and, optionally but by default, (4)
decompresses the dataset’s files to a subdirectory within a specified
directory (or, by default, a icpsr_data directory in the
current working directory).
Datasets are specified using the file_id argument. ICPSR
uses a unique number to identify each of its datasets; this number is
consistently listed alongside the dataset’s name. For the 2014
Transatlantic Trends Survey, for example, the file id is 36138:
To reproducibly download this dataset:
icpsr_download(file_id = 36138,
download_dir = tempdir()) # remember to specify a directory for your downloadMultiple datasets may be downloaded from the same research area in a
single command by passing a vector of ids to file_id. The
following downloads the Transatlantic Trends surveys for 2012, 2013, and
2014:
icpsr_download(file_id = c(34715, 34973, 36138),
download_dir = tempdir()) # remember to specify a directory for your downloadAfter the needed datasets are downloaded, they are, by default,
unzipped and ready to be loaded into R using, e.g.,
rio::import.
The terms do include an exception for “collaborating with other AUTHORIZED USERS to analyze the data for research or instructional purposes” with attribution, but the limitation to ICPSR’s authorized users renders this inadequate for the public provision of materials for reproducibility.↩︎