A data repository managed by the University of Michigan exists to help researchers fill critical data gaps on firearm violence.
The Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention Data Repository is a research data archive that currently houses more than 100 studies and datasets on firearm violence covering issues like firearm suicide prevention and attitudes and behaviors regarding guns.
The archive is housed in the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, one of the world’s largest repositories for social science data. Researchers can both access the data and are invited to share their own research.
The repository “supports research to prevent firearm fatalities and injuries” by making it easier to find and use topical data, providing a place for researchers to deposit data on firearm violence and injury, helping to identify and fill data gaps, expanding access to existing data and providing a long-term storage option to preserve data.
“For 25 years, the Dickey Amendment and U.S. federal policy prevented research examining the root causes of firearm-related injuries and fatalities,” the website reads. “The decentralized nature of the U.S. statistical system for crime and public health also means the information available to researchers is fragmented.”
This resource is a gold mine for journalists looking for certain datasets. Repositories like these are also going to become more important as the federal government threatens access to research and data.
Users can search the repository and filter by topic, geography and release date. Some examples of what’s in the repository are a study on dementia and gun access; research on restricting youth access to firearms in the health care setting; and data from national crime victimization surveys.