The Development of a Survey Data Archive in Taiwan

While survey research has a relatively long period of history in Taiwan since the late 1950s, the efforts in acquiring, maintaining and disseminating survey data in systematic ways are quite new to the social science community in Taiwan. The Center for Survey Research at Academia Sinica was established in 1994 as the most important, and the largest, national data provider for academic and quantitative research in Taiwan. In this paper, the discussion will be divided into three parts. The first part is to review the development of survey data archives in Taiwan with specific focus on the Center for Survey Research at Academia Sinica. The second part is to introduce the contents of data holdings and to describe how survey data are processed, preserved, and released to the general public in the Center for Survey Research in Taiwan. The last section in this paper will discuss the current status and future development in web applications.