1992 SIPP Topical Module 5 data doesn't seem to match its .ddf file 1992 Full Panel File produces "file SIPP92FP.DAT fails CRC check" when unzipped. What is a CRC check? From http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/104/305271/2003-01-03/2003-01-09/0 A CRC check is a very simple check originally designed to check the transmission of bit-serial data in an environment where there is a risk of noise affecting the data. The characteristics of such noise is that it tends to be "bursty", affecting short sequences of bits. A CRC check can be implemented cheaply in hardware when the data is in bit-serial form using "xor" gates and an n-bit shift register; in this case a 32-bit shift register. Given a bit sequence that has been changed it is sufficient to change no more than 32 bits elsewhere to compensate and get the shift register back into the state it would have had without the pair of corresponding changes. Given a disk image where there is likely to be a fair amount of "slack space" finding a location to form the "compensating" change is not difficult. Given that no more than 32 bits need to be changed, that the computations are fairly simple, and that the "slack space" is likely to be fairly close to the data that is changed and you have a situation where it is fairly easy to patch a disc image protected only be CRC32. From http://shekel.jct.ac.il/~citron/comm/comm-lec2/tsld011.htm The Cyclic Redundancy Check takes a block of data and computes a signature. This signature is sent after the data. The receiver computes its own signature and compares it to the signature sent. If they don?t match an error has occurred. http://www.sipp.census.gov/sipp/sourceac/sourceac.htm -- Source and Accuracy Statement for the 1992 Panel 7-Wave Longitudnal File Jean Roth, jroth@nber.org, 2002-09-11