IDLS: the Snacking Cake

Gillian Byrne QEII Library, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Atlantic DLI Training

April 19, 2006

IDLS: The Basics

Data library catalogue for UWO Data extraction tool Contains most DLI datasets Very pretty SPSS syntax files! Fantastic discovery tool:

Browse by subject Advanced search Variable searching

Scenario

Kayla has a Geography 3222 assignment. She needs to find Statistics Canada data in SPSS format on any topic. She really wants to do something clever like…oh, does money make you happy?

What do you do?

1. Curse your DLI status – though obviously an exalted position, requires far too much thinking

2. Decide ‘hey, this could be a kinda fun challenge…’

What’s a great way to find if there is data available on a topic?

IDLS! Exercise in binder. To access IDLS:

Go to http://janus.ssc.uwo.ca/idls/ or click on the shortcut on your desktops

What have we learned?

IDLS is a great discovery tool for DLI and other Stat Can data (census files, geospatial files, etc.)

Variable searching in IDLS can help you determine if a specific question was ever asked in a survey

IDLS comes with clean, ready to use SPSS Syntax files

What have we learned?

Ordinal variable: a variable that allows a value to be ranked with respect to a characteristic (better/average/worse).

Derived variable: a variable for which the values are calculated from other variables.

SPSS Syntax file: “a file includes a series of commands that will place the variables, values for variables and cases for the data file in the appropriate row and column locations within a SPSS datasheet” (from the IDLS Help).