The Impoverished Social Scientist's Guide to Data Resources

Last Updated: November 12, 2007

Major Data Resources

• Popular Public Access Social Science Data Archives
  • The DVN Network offers tens of thousnds of datasets from over a hundred archives and organizations.
  • The Henry A. Murray Research Archive, has hundreds of qualitative datasets reflecting lives over time. Most data is available free, after application.
  • The Odum Institute,is one of the oldest extant archives, and hosts many opinion polls. Most of the data is freely available.
  • ALFRED U.S. economic time series from the federal reserve.
• Major Subscription Based Data Archives
  • ICPSR, has a tremendous collection of social science data. Many datasets are publicly available, although most requires membership.
  • CESSDA, has an extensive collection of european data.
  • The Roper Center for Public Opinion, hosts tens of thousands of research surveys. There is a small charge for each dataset.
  • Sociometrics provides data primarily for sociological and psychological research. Fees are substantial, but not prohibitive.
  • Thomson Financial Research (once known as Datastream)
  • CRSP Historical Securities Time Series
  • WRDS Offers a range of economicdata and research services
• Major Data Portals
  • Fedstats Statistics from 100 Federal Agencies (also see Fedworld for documents)
  • Data Ferrett Integrated access to raw data, and on-line analysis from many agencies
  • Social Science Data on the Web- A meta-index search engine from UCSD.
  • The UVA Geospatial and Statistical Data Center has a huge collection of links, and hosts many on-line collections
  • Social Science Information Gateway. The "statistics" links database contains a wealth of pointers to data archives are particularly interesting.
  • BREAD the burea for research and economic analysis of development, has links to data collections in many developing countries.
  • Econ Data: Resources for Economists has links to replication data from econ journals, and other data of interest to economists, the Davidson Network maintains a searchable database of links to many resources, and the Econometrics Journal also maintains a long list of data resources.
  • GIS Data Geodata is a one-stop shop for U.S. goverment produced coverages. The FGDC hosts a clearinghouse for us geospatial coverages. ESRI Corporation has numerous links to commercial and free data sources, as does GeoComm corp , the Free Gis Project and The University of Michigan Numeric Data Services. (Also, although not really a clearing house, many boundary files for demographic and political units are available from the Census Bureau)
  • Political Science, Check Poly-Cy's data links page, and Paul Hensel's IR Data links.

Other Significant International Data, by Country

Asia
SSJDA	Japan Social Science Data Archive
Africa
SADA	South African Social Research Data
America (Central and South America)
CESOP	Brazilian public opinion archive
UGDA	Uruguay Data Archive
Canada
CORA	Canadian public opinion research data
TDR	Tri-university data resources. Canada social and geographic data.
Stat Canada	Offical government statistics from Canada
Europe (Central, Northern , Southern, Western)
ESSDA	Estonian data archive
CIS	Spanish sociological data archive
Reglo	Bulgarian social science data
Eastern Europe and Russia
SASD	Slovak data archive.
Independent Institute for Social Policy	Russian social policy data.
Polish data archive	Polish social science data.
Kiev International Institute Sociology	Ukraine social science data.
Middle East
ISDC	Israel Social Science Data Center
Multinational Data
World Bank	Data collected by the world bank.
OECD	Economic data collected through OECD
Pacific
NZSSDS	New Zealand Social Science Data Service
ASSDA	Australian social science data.
United Kingdom
UK National Statistics	Free access to data produced by the Office for National Statistics, government departments and devolved administrations
Qualidata	Qualitative social science data

Other Significant U.S. Data Resources, by Subject

These sites provide interesting data on Congress, courts, crime, demographics, economy, education, elections, federal agencies, health, public opinion, psychology, and state and local data that are not in our current holdings. Sites identified with a  provide interactive access and dynamic subsetting of several large datasets.

Congress

Crime

LINK	DESCRIPTION
Bureau of Justice Statistics	Statistics, information, and publications on criminals, corrections, law enforcement, and victims
FBI Crime Statistics	The source of the nation-wide Unified Crime Report.  Provided by the FBI
Uniform Crime Reports, 1990-1995	Provides access to county-level data on crimes reported and arrests as provided to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.  Provided by the University of Virginia Geospatial and Statistical Data Center

Demographics

LINK	DESCRIPTION
United Nations Statistics Division	Allows for downloading or printing of summary tables.  Provided by the United Nations
Bureau of Labor Statistics Data	Allows for customized extraction from a wide variety of BLS Data series.  Provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Census Data Extraction System	Allows for extraction of data and maps from U.S. censuses. Provided by the Census Bureau
IPUMS - Interactive Public Use Micro-Samples	The IPUMS is the largest publicly accessible computerized database on a human population. It includes dozens of high-precision individual-level samples of U. S. censuses from 1850 to 1990 and many international censuses. The IPUMS combines these samples (which were generally coded and documented differently) into a single database that assigns uniform codes to variables across all years for which they are available. Provided by the
Panel Study of Income Dynamics	The PSID is a longitudinal survey of a representative sample of US individuals and families. It has been ongoing since 1968. The data are collected annually, and the data files contain the full span of information collected over the course of the study. PSID data can be used for cross-sectional, longitudinal, and intergenerational analysis and for studying both individuals and families.  Provided by the University of Michigan
Statistical Abstract of  the United States	Comprehensive data on social and economic conditions.  Provided by the Census Bureau
State Data Centers	Detailed data collected by individual states, and not normally available at the national level. Provided by the Census Bureau
(UK) National Digital Archive of Datasets	Data on social and economic conditions in the United Kingdom.  Provided by the University of London
(UK) Data Archive	Data on social and economic conditions in the United Kingdom.  Provided by the University of Essex
(UK)Government Statistics	Ready-reference stats from the UK government.
CIESIN	Digital demographic and envrionmental maps and data, of the United States. The center for international earth science information networks, Columbia U.

Economy

Education

Elections

Federal Agencies

Health

Public Opinion

LINK	DESCRIPTION
American Religion Data Archive	Allows on-line extraction and subsetting of public opinion data on religion. Provided by the The Lilly Endowment
NORC	National Organization for Research, provides the General Social Survey and many others
Pew Research Center Sites	Offer many timely surveys for download
The Question Bank	Searchable survey questions -- UK oriented

State and Local Data

LINK	DESCRIPTION
County and City Data Books	Provides access to the CD-ROM versions of both the 1988 and 1994 editions of the County and City Data Book. A wide variety of Demographic, Social, and Economic Variables are presented for counties, cities, and states.  Provided by the University of Virginia Geospatial and Statistical Data Center
County Business Patterns	Provides access to employment, wage, and establishment data for states and counties. Data is aggregated at the 2-digit SIC code level. Variables include payroll (1st quarter and annual), number of employees, and number of establishments by employment size class.  Provided by the University of Virginia Geospatial and Statistical Data Center
Regional Economic Information System	REIS provides employment, income and earnings data for states, counties, and metropolitan areas. Variables include personal income, per-capita income, earnings by industry, and full and part-time employment by industry.  Provided by the Bureau for Economic Analysis
Lijphart Election Arcives	The Lijphart Elections Archive, housed at the University of California, San Diego campus, is a research collection of district level election results for approximately 350 national legislative elections in 26 countries. Provided by the University of California, San Diego

Social Science GIS Data

Experimental Psychology Data