CES has announced the availability of 1970 and 1980 100-percent and sample (long-form) decennial census files in the Census RDC network, as well as an identically structured version of the 1990 decennial census, facilitating research using multiple years of census data. Contact the RDC administrator at one of the Census Research Data Centers or Dr. Todd Gardner of the CES Data Staff for more details. The Census Bureau has provided the VirtualRDC with zero obs (dummy) dataset files for 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000, “zero obs” (see data page for details). Zero obs files replicate the structure of the data on the RDC servers, but contain no actual data. Because zero obs files contain variable names, locations, and length, and variable labels, researchers interested in submitting proposals can see whether the variables of interest to them are on the RDC files, and can begin writing code before they travel to the RDC. Documentation for these new files has been created by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) created additional documentation for 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000. This documentation can be accessed directly through the ICPSR web site, <http://www.icpsr.umich.edu>. It will also be available through the Decennial Census Long Form Sample section of the Research Data page of the CES Web site.
