We are delighted to announce the release of Phase II of the CSES Integrated Module Dataset (IMD), which is now available for download on the CSES website (www.cses.org).
The IMD is a product of the CSES Secretariat and brings together select variables from CSES Modules 1-4 into one unified, harmonized dataset. The current version of the IMD contains data on 281,083 respondents from 55 polities, covering 174 elections over the period 1996-2016. This dataset includes 276 variables including like-dislike, left-right, and leader measures for more than 600 parties.
Over 40 new variables have been added in the Phase II release of CSES IMD including:
- Political Information, including pre-coded political information indexes for each CSES module, the latter a unique feature of CSES IMD
- Extensive suite of macro-level electoral variables including elections results, electoral rules, expert judgments of party families, and classifications such as the effective number of parties measure
- Aggregate level macro-data such as GDP, unemployment, population data for all polities
Among other innovations, CSES IMD includes harmonized numerical party/coalition codes within polities across CSES modules, within-dataset labels for all parties/coalitions, and an incumbent vote choice variable.
A non-comprehensive list of changes made to the previously release Phase I of the CSES IMD can be found on the Errata page for the CSES IMD. Phase II includes several improvements to the data and documentation, including a new codebook appendix containing detailed information about the alphabetical (relational) data in CSES and how to use this along with the harmonized numerical data. The Errata page for CSES IMD can be found by selecting Download Data on the CSES website, navigating to the CSES IMD page, and then selecting the Errata link in the white box to the right of the IMD download page
Many variables that will eventually be included in the IMD are not available in this second version of the dataset. As this is a work in progress, some errors may still be present and we would appreciate being notified of any errors or suggestions by email to: [email protected]
We hope that users will find this preliminary version of the CSES IMD helpful to their work.
Thank you for your support of the CSES!