ICPSR, located in the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, maintains the world's largest archive of social science datasets. ICPSR is a membership-based, not-for-profit, organisation serving member colleges and universities in the United States and abroad by providing:

(a) Access to over 40,000 data files covering a wide range of academic disciplines, including political science, sociology, history, economics, gerontology, criminal justice, public health, education, and law.

(b) Training facilities in basic and advanced techniques of quantitative social analysis

(c) Resources that facilitate the use of advanced computer technology by social scientists

Students and researchers at member institutions have access to all the holdings of the Archive free of charge. While institutional membership is the main route of access to ICPSR resources, data are also available to individuals at non member institutions for a fee.

The WWW service provide information on ICPSR's resources and services. Users may search and browse the catalogue of data holdings to identify data of interest. Detailed descriptions of collections in the archive are available, and documentation is searchable and downloadable. Subsetting and analysis capabilities are available for selected data collections and users may also participate in forums related to ICPSR datasets. Information on training is offered, and the website also features electronic versions of ICPSR publications, including the full-text of the ICPSR Bulletin (quarterly publication describing newly released and updated ICPSR data collections).

ICPSR distributes all collections via network file transfer and selected studies are also distributed on CDRom and diskette.