CD-ROM Reviews
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00112 |
| Published date | 01 September 1997 |
| Author | Steve Ludlam |
| Date | 01 September 1997 |
| Subject Matter | CD-ROM Reviews |
CD-ROM Reviews
STEVE LUDLAM
University of Sheeld
British Politics
British Election Studies Information System
Publisher: Economic and Social Research Council Data Archive and London
Guildhall University Centre for Comparative European Survey Data
Review copy supplier: Economic and Social Research Council Data Archive.
Tel: 01206 872001. Fax: 01206 872003 email archive@essex.ac.uk
Price: £59.75 (NOT £350 VAT as listed in the Socinfo Guide to IT Resouces)
Copies can be ordered from the Archive's website http://dawww.essex.ac.uk
Platforms: IBMPC
This is an extraordinarily valuable CD-ROM, on which Richard Topf has
mounted not only the data and documentation from the British Election Studies
from 1964 to 1992, but also created a database of the 2853 BES questions asked
in the nine presented in MS Access format (for which run-time versions are
provided on the disc), and SPSS-for-Windows format as well as SPSS portable
format ®les for all the BES datasets.
The simplest pathway into the data starts with three buttons labelled
`attitudes and values', `demographic data' and `elections and parties'; each of
these leads to further sets of buttons representing issues (15, 12 and 8 issues
respectively) about which BES surveys have asked over the years, and these in
turn reveal the questions and response values for every survey in which the issue
has been posed; in turn, a `view frequencies' button opens a single ®le presenting
the results for all the surveys, providing a terri®c `at a glance' view through time;
for appropriate questions, the responses are displayed as graphs. Alternatively,
the frequencies for the entire surveys can be viewed, a survey at a time, with the
added facility of a search button that enables the survey frequency to be
searched for a key term (such as tax). The database of all the BES questions
asked from 1964 to 1992 gives variable numbers, SPSS labels, question texts,
and response values: this database alone ®lls a vital gap in the toolbox of
scholars wanting to make further use of the BES datasets.
Also provided on the CD-ROM and available from the BESIS menu are the
election prediction and analysis program UK-Elect, and a database of the 1992
general election results. A bibliography of 235 BES-related publications is also
provided in database form with a simple search button.
This has to be the best value for money of any CD-ROM produced so far for
students of British political science, combining as it does easy access to key BES
results, the database of all the BES questions 1964±92, the SPSS datasets in two
formats, and the UK-Elect shareware package, and all giftwrapped in a push
# Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Review Section
785
button front-end. Richard Topf and the ESRC are to be heartily congratulated
and thanked for producing it.
International Politics and Foreign Policy1
Treaties and Alliances of the World
Publisher: Cartermill Publishing
Review copy supplier: Cartermill. Tel: 0171 896 2424. Fax: 0171 896 2449
Price: £199.00
Platforms: IBMPC
This CD-ROM oers a much expanded electronic version of the sixth (1995)
edition of the book of the same name by N. J. Rengger with John Campbell, but
adds the full texts of 75 treaties and agreements, cross-referenced to the text of
the 18 substantial chapters of...
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