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Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives

Filtered search

The system allows filtering by topic, keyword, data collection year, country in which the study took place, and the institution providing the study metadata. These institutions are mainly research data repositories. Note the limitations: the keywords filter includes the 2000 most common keywords whereas the country and collection years filters include only those studies where the metadata includes the country and date information in standardised, machine-actionable format.

Topic filter: topics identify general topics, subjects or themes of a study. Many but not all metadata providers used the CESSDA Topic Classification for their topic terms. Topics can be selected from the visible topic results. Search for topics by starting to write into the search topic bar.

Keywords filter: keywords describe the content of the data. Many but not all metadata providers use the ELSST Thesaurus for their keywords. As for topics, keywords can be selected from the visible keyword results and keywords can be searched by starting to write into the search keywords bar.

Data Access filter allows you to narrow down search results based on how the study data is accessed. There are two options:

  • Open: These datasets are freely accessible, meaning you can download or use the data without restrictions.
  • Restricted: These datasets require permission or specific conditions to access. You may need to apply or meet certain criteria to obtain the data.

Collection years filter: The selected collection years are immediately effective when you drag the years on the line, but if you enter the years into the boxes, you need to use the ‘Go’ button. Clicking on the ‘Go’ resets the line to the original position, thus removing any selections you have made there.

Country filter: The country filter is the country which the data cover. The filter only includes those studies where the metadata provides an ISO 3166-1 country code. It is possible to use an additional free-text search with country name for more results.

Publisher filter: If you want data only from a particular data repository or repositories, use the Publisher filter. If you want to exclude a Publisher, select all other publishers except the one(s) you want to exclude. Another way is to use the NOT operation (see Advanced Search).

Time Method filter helps you refine search results based on the time dimension of the dataset. It describes how data was collected over time. The most common types include:

  • Cross-sectional: Data was collected at a single point in time or over a short period.
  • Longitudinal: Data was collected repeatedly over time, tracking changes or developments.

Using filters increases the precision of the search. Let’s imagine you are looking for data on the Norwegian schools:

  1. Enter the relevant terms into the search box, e.g.: school norway. This will give you a lot of results, some which might be relevant, as well as some not so relevant results.
  2. To get more relevant results, enter into the search box the word school and choose Norway from the country filter on the left. Now you get results from studies covering Norway as a country which might be more relevant. Another way of finding relevant dataset can be using the keywords filter and choosing the keyword “Schools” and then choosing Norway from the country filter.
  3. If you are interested only in data collected over the last five years, use search 2) and in addition, use the collection years filter and select the relevant years. This should give you fewer but relevant dataset in your results list. This way, using the filter options has increased the precision of your search.

If you wish to find historical data, use the Collection years filter. For example, for data on political issues in the post-war period:

  1. Select first 1960-1969 as collection years in the filter and then enter relevant search term like education in the search box.
  2. Another good option to find such data is to first select the collection years in the filter as in 1) and next browse the Topic filter. In the topic filter, you will find relevant topics like Education and Compulsory and pre-school education, which you can then select to be included in your search. The system allows you to select more than one topic at a time. Now you should have in your results list data related to education from 1960-1969.

Filtered search

When using two or more filters, the default is that they are combined using the AND (+) logic. This means that all the selected filters are applied in the search. For example, if you pick specific years using the collection years filter and then select a topic through the topic filter, only datasets matching both criteria will appear in the results. In other words, the dataset documentation must include both the chosen years as the data collection period and the selected topic. This way, both filter requirements are met. On the other hand, within a single filter, the default logic is OR. Thus, if you select several topics or keywords, the results will include datasets where any of the topics or keywords are mentioned.

To keep the selected filters active, use the ‘Back’ button or the arrow on your browser to navigate back to the search page from the detailed study view. If you click on the data catalogue logo instead, all selections will disappear.

Use the ‘Reset filters’ button to clear your filter selections.