Socionet--Online Access to Exemplary Social Science Data

Social science data sets have gown exponentially both in size and number over the last tenyears. However, easy access to these data sets by social scientists has lagged considerably. Ourobjective is to empower social scientists with the ability to search a wide universe of archived socialscience data sets, select data appropriate to their research objectives, and acquire files anddocumentation as soon as they are selected. The data sets to be made available on-line are thosecomprising the public data archives at Sociometrics Corporation: the Data Archive on AdolescentPregnancy and Pregnancy Prevention, the American Family Data Archive, the AIDS/STD Data Archive,the Maternal Drug Abuse Archive, the Data Archive of Social Research on Aging, and the Disability DataArchive. Over 200 premier data sets--processed and documented in standard fashion--are currentlyavailable from these archives. By late 1995, the launch date for the on-line data center, over 350 datasets will be available. Two access modes will be investigated: (1) SOCIONET-DIRECT --direct accessto data, documentation, and software contained on a set of CD-ROMs housed at the user's site, eitheron a single microcomputer or on a LAN (local Area Network); and (2) SOCIONET-REMOTE--on-line,remote access to the SOCIONET data, documentation, and software housed at SociometricsCorporation. SOCIONET will be accompanied by innovative search and retrieval software that allowsusers to browse through the contents of the various data archives at both the study and variable levels.Phase I will produce designs and prototype systems that demonstrate the feasibility of establishing andoperating SOCIONET.