Analyzing Data Online

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SDA Description and How to Find Data

The online analysis system, Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA), allows you to run both simple and complex analyses, recode and compute new variables, subset variables or cases for downloading, browse codebooks online, and run Quick Tables. Listed below are a few steps detailing a common way to locate and analyze data.

  1. Browse or Search available studies on the SAMHDA Web site.
  2. Narrow your search to a particular series and year, or a study.
  3. Read the study description and documentation provided.
  4. Select the Analyze & Subset tab. You will be asked to log in and agree to our Terms of Use. You may log in anonymously or with your MyData account.
  5. Select the action you want to perform with the data from that study.

SAMHDA's SDA Tutorial gives detailed directions on how to choose variables and run cross-tabulations using SDA.

Most of SAMHDA's holdings are available for online analysis using SDA. In some cases, only one part of a study is available (e.g., ADSS, Gambling Impact, MTF). SAMHDA also concatenates some studies, merging each part into a single SDA file (e.g., DATOS, DATOS-A, NCS-1, NTIES).

SAMHDA is currently producing online codebooks for studies not included for analysis on SDA.

Note regarding studies with complex sample designs

Some studies archived by SAMHDA used a complex sample design. For these studies, great care should be taken when evaluating the results of analyses run on SDA. This is because only some statistical output correctly takes into account the complex sample design of the study. We are working to improve future versions of SDA so all available analysis features and statistical output will correctly account for studies with a complex design. Please refer to the online documentation for the most recent information on which SDA analytic features and statistical output correctly account for complex designs. To determine whether or not a study used a complex sample design, refer to the codebook for that study.

Help Resources

Other help resources and documentation:

For further illustration of how to use the SDA please consult the following reports:

Data Available for Online Analysis

The following series and studies are available for online analysis:

Current Series

Other Studies

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research   Office of Applied Studies   Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive (SAMHDA) is an initiative of the Office of Applied Studies, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, and is based at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).

We appreciate the appropriate citation for analyses using data obtained from SAMHDA. Each SAMHDA study description and codebook includes a suggested bibliographic citation for the data.

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