Australian Data Archive


The Australian Data Archive (ADA) provides a national service for the collection and preservation of digital research data. ADA disseminates this data for secondary analysis by academic researchers and other users. The archive is based in the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods (CSRM) at the Australian National University (ANU). A team of professional data archivists, advised by a panel of leading social scientists, provides both stewardship and outreach services to our community of data users in academia, government and the public more broadly. The data and infrastructure for the ADA is provided through the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI).

Accessing Data

All visitors to the ADA Catalogue can browse and search, view study and variable documentation (such as frequency tables and data dictionaries) and download related material (questionnaires, codebooks, etc).

Registered users who have completed the relevant undertaking form(s) can download entire studies or subsets of variables in a range of formats.

About the Australian Data Archive


The ADA:
  • is a Core TrustSeal certified repository
  • acquires, documents, preserves and disseminates data online to a broad range of social science researchers in the university, government and other sectors
  • provides the only comprehensive social science data collection in Australia, with a catalogue of over 6000 data sets from more than 1500 projects and studies
  • holds data from Australian surveys, opinion polls and censuses and includes data from other countries within the Asia Pacific region
  • provides specialist services within specific subject areas, including Indigenous studies, electoral behaviour, criminology and some humanities disciplines, and within specific data types, including quantitative, qualitative, time series and panel data, and historical statistics
  • locates and manages access to overseas social science data sets required by Australian based researchers
  • adopts, develops and applies standards in line with international best practice (such as DDI and OAIS model)
  • supports the management and dissemination of ARC funded data collections arising from Discovery and Linkage grants
ADA is a member of international organisations (including the International Federation of Data Organizations, the DDI Alliance and the International Association of Social Science Information Service and Technology) and plays a major role in cross-national collaborative projects

Data Profile
Australian Data Archive has 6 data records in Research Data Australia, which cover 32 subjects areas including Social Sciences, Schooling and CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY and involve 3 group(s). All of the information provided by Australian Data Archive can be accessed from the box on the right hand side of this page.
Subjects Covered
Organisations & Groups
Last 5 Data Records Added