Appendix

Exercise 1

Tell me about these data

For each of the datasets, answer the following questions:

1. Do you have to agree in some fashion to a data use agreement? If yes, how?

2. Can you download the data today?

3. Can you share it with your team members?

4. Can you include the data in the replication package?

5. How would you go about preserving the data you used for reproducibility and replicability?

Group 1

• [G]SOEP - start at https://paneldata.org/soep-core/

• PSID - start at https://simba.isr.umich.edu/data/data.aspx

• NSLY - https://www.nlsinfo.org/content/getting-started/accessing-data

Group 2

• Current Population Survey (CPS) - start at https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/data.html

• HRS - start at https://hrs.isr.umich.edu/data-products

• World Values Survey - start at https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV7.jsp

Group 3

• Current Population Survey (CPS) via IPUMS - start at https://cps.ipums.org/cps/

• Health-Related Microdata for Low- and Middle-Income Countries https://www.idhsdata.org/idhs/

• Distance between pairs of countries - https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&channel=entpr&q=CEPII+GeoDist

Exercise 2

Downloading data via code

Easiest:

Stata

use "$URL" , clear

Why not?

• Will it be there in two months? In six years?

• What if the internet connection is down?

Easy:

Stata

global URL "https://www.cepii.fr/distance/dist_cepii.dta"
copy "$URL" (outputfile), replace

R

download.file(url="$URL",destfile="(outputfile)")

What if the internet dies? Use caching of downloaded data.

// ::::  Process only if data are present 

capture confirm  file "${datapath}/dist_cepii.dta"
if _rc == 0 {
    di in green "Data file is present, processing data"
} else { 
    di in red "Downloading data" 
    copy "$URL" "${datapath}/dist_cepii.dta", replace
}

//============ at this point, the data is available ======
// ::::  Process always 

use "${datapath}/dist_cepii.dta", clear
// do stuff....

That was easy! On to confidential data!

Environments in Stata

See Environments in Stata.

Links

Some additional guidance can be found on the website of the Social Science Data Editors (URLs subject to change):

• https://social-science-data-editors.github.io/guidance/DCAS_Restricted_data.html#us-census-bureau-and-fsrdc

• https://social-science-data-editors.github.io/guidance/Requested_information_hosting.html#self-generated-repositories

Additional training resources

• “Day 1 Tutorial”: Presented on Sept 12, 2024 at FSRDC conference (pre-program), subject to change: https://larsvilhuber.github.io/day1-tutorial/

• General purpose guidance about “self checking” your reproducibility package: https://larsvilhuber.github.io/self-checking-reproducibility/

Examples of replication packages

• https://doi.org/10.3886/E154241V2 not only code, but faces the problem that IRS data cannot have variables revealed. Their workaround is not the same one as in this tutorial.

• https://doi.org/10.3886/E162581V1

This textbook’s source: labordynamicsinstitute/reproducibility-confidential

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