Cross-Study Search Help
Collections
A collection
is a group of datasets or studies.
You must select one or more collections in which to carry out the search.
You can select entire collections of datasets or individual datasets
within one or more collections.
Selecting Entire Collections
Select an entire collection of datasets
by clicking the checkbox at the left of the collection name.
Then all of the datasets in that collection will be searched.
Selecting Individual Datasets
To see the list of individual datasets within a collection,
click on the arrow at the left of the collection name.
Select an individual dataset
by clicking the checkbox at the left of the dataset name.
After you have selected the collection(s) and dataset(s) you
want to search,
click on the 'Search Options and Results' tab.
Types of Cross-Study Search
There are two types of cross-study searching:
Searching VARIABLE-level information
A collection
is a group of datasets or studies.
When you select one or more collections to search,
and you indicate that you want to search for variable-level information
(which is the default),
the variable-level search screen appears.
These are the variable-level fields that are searched:
- Variable Name
- Variable Label
- Question or Item Text
- Category Labels
By default, the search will cover ALL
of those fields, but you can select one specific field to search,
by selecting it from the drop-down list.
You can also select a specific combination of fields to search
by using an advanced search technique to specify the field for each
search term, as described in the
Field Syntax
section of the Search Techniques Help file.
When the search results are displayed, you can see the full variable
description for each variable found, by clicking on the 'View' button.
Searching STUDY-level information
A collection
is a group of datasets or studies.
When you select one or more collections to search,
and you indicate that you want to search for study-level information,
the study-level search screen appears.
These are the study-level fields that are searched (if they exist for the study):
- Study Title
- Keywords
- Abstract
- Citation
- Principal Investigators
- Funding Agency
- Geographic Coverage
- Universe
- Sampling Method
- Collection Notes
- Time Period
- Data Collection Dates
By default, the search will cover ALL
of those fields, but you can select one specific field to search,
by selecting it from the drop-down list.
You can also select a specific combination of fields to search
by using an advanced search technique to specify the field for each
search term, as described in the
Field Syntax
section of the Search Techniques Help file.
When the search results are displayed, you can see the full study
description for a study by clicking on the 'View' button.