ipeDTAs: Automagically Download Labeled .dta IPEDS Files

• This .do file automates downloading IPEDS complete .csv data files, .do labeling files, and dictionaries
• It then processes the .csv data and .do files to create labeled .dta files ready of analysis in Stata or R via haven
• To select which files are downloaded, comment out and/or delete lines from the list at the top of the script (instructions are provided)

To Use

Option One: Download as .zip (easy)

• Click the green Code button
• Select "download as .zip" beneath the URLs
• Open .zip file on your computer
• Open ipeDTAs.do, follow instructions, and run!

Option Two: Clone (or fork) this GitHub Repo (if familiar with git)

• Click the green Code button
• Copy the https or ssh link
• Clone using terminal or your git client
• Open ipeDTAs.do, follow instructions, and run!

Option Three: Copy and paste code (easy, but error prone)

• Click on ipeDTAs.do and copy the code
• Open a blank .do file in Stata
• Paste the code
• Follow instructions and run!

System Requirements

• Stata version 16.0 or higher
• Python for PyStata (often already installed)
  • See Stata's PyStata documentation for more info
  • See python.org's installation page to download if not installed
• Storage space requirement depends on how much you download
  • All of IPEDS
  • ~12gb to download (raw zippped and raw unzipped copies of data are kept during processing, optional lines to delete at end of .do file)
  • ~4gb to store (keeping only the labeled .dta files and dictionaries)

Note on Time to Download

• If you wish to download the entirity of IPEDS, it can take several hours
• To avoid overwhelming IPEDS servers there is a 3 second delay between each file download, which at over 3000 files, becomes a significant amount of time
• If you wish, at your own risk of being rejected by NCES servers, you can reduce (or remove) sleep 3000 on lines 1380, 1395, and 1410

Acknowledgement

• This project builds off Dr. Ben Skinner's downloadipeds.R project and wouldn't have been possible without it