General Information
The Computer-Assisted Survey Methods Program (CSM) at the University of California, Berkeley, develops and supports the SDA software package in order to facilitate the documentation, analysis, and distribution of survey data on the World Wide Web.

How to Try Out SDA
To access a demonstration data archive, direct your WWW browser to the following URL:http://sda.berkeley.edu

Current Features (Version 1.2b)

• Browse the documentation for a dataset or a questionnaire
• Introduction files, appendices, indexes to variables
• Full description of each variable
• Data analysis capabilities
• Frequencies and crosstabulations
• Comparisons of means (with complex standard errors)
• Correlation matrix
• Comparisons of correlations
• Regression (ordinary least squares)
• Logit and probit regression
• List values of individual cases
• Create new variables
• Recode one or more variables
• Compute a new variable
• List and/or delete newly created variables
• Make a user-specified subset of variables and/or cases, and download data files and documentation
• ASCII data file for the subset
• SAS, SPSS, or Stata data definitions for the subset
• Full documentation for the subset
  

SDA Projects under Development

• Word Codebooks
  The next version of SDA will produce codebooks formatted for Microsoft Word. This new output option will not only produce more attractive print codebooks - with various fonts, heading styles, etc. - but will also allow users to introduce extra material, such as charts and other graphics, into their codebooks. In addition, these Word codebooks can be automatically converted into PDF format (using Adobe's Acrobat software).  To see an example of a small codebook produced by the next version of SDA's XCODEBK program in Word format, see http://sda.berkeley.edu/info/tagged.doc.  And here is the same codebook after it has been converted to a PDF file: http://sda.berkeley.edu/info/tagged.pdf.
  
• Quick Tables
  A simplified method of obtaining analysis results is under development.  A key feature of this new capability is that data archives using SDA can design their own user interface, and use SDA to handle the backend data processing.  This is a joint project of CSM and of ICPSR at the University of Michigan. For a preliminary look at how Quick Tables will work, see the Quick Tables information page at: http://sda.berkeley.edu/quicktables.

• Data Documentation Initiative (DDI)
  Many organizations are working together to arrive at a common standard for documenting data files using XML. CSM is participating in this effort and has been involved in developing various tools to assist in implementing this standard. To access the tools developed so far, see: http://sda.berkeley.edu/ddi/tools.

For additional information or to offer suggestions or comments, contact:

Tom Piazza
Tel: (510) 642-6569
e-mail: piazza@csm.berkeley.edu