Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
organization of research institutions
The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is an American political science and social science research consortium, based at the University of Michigan. It was founded in 1962. An integral part of the infrastructure of social science research, ICPSR maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction (over 16,000 discrete studies/surveys with more than 70,000 datasets).
History
1960s
The ICPSR was founded by Warren E. Miller as the Inter-university Consortium for Political Research (ICPR). Initially, it was to be an arm of the American National Election Studies, responsible for data dissemination. Miller was also the institute's first director, remaining as such until 1970. In an August 1962 letter to Rensis Likert, Miller justified his creation of the institute with four principles: "institutional rather than individual participation", "continuing rather than episodic relationships", "facilitation of advanced training in research analysis", and "participation in research planning as well as analysis".
The founders of the ICPR pictured it as a cooperative funded by subscriptions, so the organization had three subscription categories. However, by 1963 grants had overtaken subscriptions as the largest source of income, and by 1966 staff were openly discussing the importance of grants. Grants remained the ICPR's largest source of income for the rest of the decade.
The public source identifies “Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research” as organization of research institutions. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Inter-university, Consortium and Political.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6044782. VIAF identifies the subject as 140182702. The Library of Congress control number is n79141035. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1962, 1970, 1963 and 1966.
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This entry incorporates text from “Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.