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starting in 1988, the brazilian institute of geography and statistics (ibge) quinquennially included a health supplement questionnaire alongside their annual pesquisa nacional de domicilios (pnad) to monitor public health and inform the ongoing debate ... [Read more...]

obsessively-detailed instructions to analyze publicly-available survey data with free tools - the r language, the survey package, and (for big data) sqlsurvey + monetdb.governments spend billions of dollars each year surveying their populations.  ... [Read more...]

the integrated public use microdata series international (ipumsi) has been my white whale since i started in survey research.  non-demographers, perhaps think of this repository as a martryoshka varanasi-kaaba-ark of the covenant: nothing compares... [Read more...]

guest post by my friend thomas yokota, an oahu-based epidemiologist. palmero professor vito muggeo wrote the joinpoint analysis section of the code below to demonstrate that the segmented package eliminates the need for external (registration-only, windows-only) software. survey package creator and professor thomas lumley wrote the svypredmarg function to replicate ... [Read more...]

an underexplored chest of international quantitative aptitude testing, the trends in international mathematics and science study (timss) would make any pearson stockholder smile.  examining the mathematical mastery of more than 600,000 students fr... [Read more...]

an uncharted world of international reading comprehension information, the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) would make any ets executive blush. testing the educational chops of more than 300,000 students from nearly fifty count... [Read more...]

the next generation in brazilian employment statistics has arrived.  the pesquisa nacional por amostra de domicilios continua (pnadc) permits economists and social scientists of every stripe to examine employment patterns and trends for all twenty... [Read more...]

the creators of monetdb at centrum wiskunde and informatica generously provided me with a unix shell account to test out each of the scripts in the repository.  much of my code already worked across platforms, but i have finished tweaking and test... [Read more...]

introducing swmap: cartography with complex survey data. this collection of publicly-available r syntax implements granular geographic variation visualizations similar to those seen in the popular press without compromising on survey methodology.thanks to david rae, paul regular, joseph larmarange, djalma pessoa, hadley wickham, thomas lumley, john baumgartner, viviane quintaes, bob ... [Read more...]

as the oldest panel survey out there, the bureau of labor statistics' national longitudinal surveys (nls) have been operating so long that justin bieber's grandparents might be too young (and also too legally canadian) to have participated in the initi... [Read more...]

in 2012, more than one quarter of the united states population lived in the jurisdiction of a police department that submitted details about every crime to a central repository maintained by the fbi.  a production of the uniform crime reports (ucr) program, the national incident-based reporting system (nibrs) compiles statistics from ... [Read more...]

above and beyond its namesake roosevelt-era retirement safety net, the social security administration oversees two federal programs - social security disability insurance and supplemental security insurance.  currently covering more than ten milli... [Read more...]

each and every year, the institute of museum and library services coaxes librarians around the country to put down their handheld "shhhh..." sign and fill out a detailed online questionnaire about their central library, branch, even bookmobile.  t... [Read more...]

hi everyone, please share this:  if you are an experienced user of a publicly-available survey data set from any country or international organization, let's work together on some user-friendly code and a short blog post for http://asdfree.com.&nb... [Read more...]

this post and accompanying syntax would not have been possible without dan oberski.  read more, find out why.  thanks dan.dear survey administrator: someone sent you this link because you work for an organization or a government agency that c... [Read more...]

a global barometer of public opinion, the world values survey (wvs) clocks in as your best source of cross-cultural moods, attitudes.   you might find its most famous product sweepingly general, but who among us has never ever swept a smidgen of n... [Read more...]

heaven knows we've all been there: you're in a heated argument with some patriotic zealot who thinks (insert country here) has the best labor force on earth.  you know they're just spewing made-up-statistic after made-up-statistic, but you don't h... [Read more...]

doctors prescribe medications for patients all the time.  all the time.  sometimes the results are beneficial, other times the drug has no discernible effect, but occasionally those substances actually cause harm.  since the drug is alre... [Read more...]

professors of public health 101 probably cite the results of the demographic and health surveys (dhs) more than all other data sources combined.  funded by the united states agency for international development (usaid) and administered by the tech... [Read more...]