Research Guides: Journalism and Media: Statistics & Data

Databases for Statistics & Datasets

Statista This link opens in a new window
A tool for researching quantitative data, statistics and related information. Statista includes directly accessible data for 170 industries from 50 countries through The Statistics Portal, as well as industry reports, market studies, surveys, consumer market data, digital market data and more. Useful for market research and data literacy. Graphs may be downloaded in a variety of formats for inclusion in presentations and research papers.
ICPSR - Inter-university Consortium for Political & Social Research This link opens in a new window
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ICPSR maintains a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. It hosts many specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.
Some notable collections include:
- Research Data Gov - for restricted microdata from Federal Agencies
- College and Beyond II - for studying the impact and outcomes of higher education
- SOMAR - for studying social media data
Statistical Insights (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Provides abstracting, indexing, and full text for publications from hundreds of public domain and licensed data sources. Includes state and federal government, business, and international statistical publications as well as statistical tables.
Rand California and US Statistics This link opens in a new window
RAND US contains nearly many social science databases covering all 50 US states. The CA collection contains these US databases, as well as detailed databases on California. Data on a wide range of factors such as health, economics, population and more. Maps and data visualizations help users explore the data.
Statistical Abstracts of the United States This link opens in a new window
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Published from 1878 to 2012, an authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States.
re3data.org - Registry of Research Data Repositories This link opens in a new window
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A global registry of research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines. It presents repositories for the permanent storage and access of data sets to researchers, funding bodies, publishers and scholarly institutions. Browse by subject, content types, or country.
re3data.org promotes a culture of sharing, increased access and better visibility of research data. The registry went live in autumn 2012 and is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Repository Finder
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Repository Finder, a pilot project of the Enabling FAIR Data Project led by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in partnership with DataCite and the Earth, space and environment sciences community, can help you find an appropriate repository to deposit your research data. The tool is hosted by DataCite and queries the re3data registry of research data repositories.

Websites for Statistics & Datasets

CA Department of Public Health Data & Statistics
Access to public health data and information, such as queries, resources, statistics, surveys, informatics, GIS, and health indicators.
CA Dept of Education Statistics
Data and statistics collected from California schools and learning support resources to identify trends and educational needs and to measure performance.
CA Geoportal
The California Geoportal provides easy and convenient ways to discover and share geospatial data resources.
CA Health and Human Services Open Data Portal
Non confidential health and human services data that can be easily retrieved, combined, downloaded, sorted, searched, and analyzed.
Data LA
Open datasets to analyze and create visualizations with from all LA agencies.
LA Homeless Services Count
Data sets and service planning areas for homelessness in LA.

Bureau of Justice Statistics
Provides statistics on crime trends, homicide trends and characteristics, law enforcement management and administration.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Statistics on inflation, career outlook, unemployment, pay, and productivity.
Census Survey of Business Owners
The Survey of Business Owners (SBO) provides the only comprehensive, regularly collected source of information on selected economic and demographic characteristics for businesses and business owners by gender, ethnicity, race, and veteran status.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Data & Statistics
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Data and statistics from the CDC organized by disease.
Envirofacts
Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) portal for statistics and data on air, water, land, and pollution.
General Social Survey (GSS)
Since 1972, the GSS has provided politicians, policymakers, and scholars with a clear and unbiased perspective on what Americans think and feel about such issues as national spending priorities, crime and punishment, intergroup relations, and confidence in institutions.
National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES)
Educational statistics from early childhood through postsecondary education.
Pew Research Center
Public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. Topics range from politics, technology, social trends, religion, science, and race and ethnicity.
Statistical Briefing Book
The SBB enables users to access online information to learn more about juvenile crime and victimization and about youth involved in the juvenile justice system. Developed for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) by the National Center for Juvenile Justice, SBB provides timely and reliable statistical answers to the most frequently asked questions from policymakers, the media, and the general public. In addition, the data analysis and dissemination tools available through SBB give users quick and easy access to detailed statistics on a variety of juvenile justice topics, including youth victims of violence.

CIA World Factbook
information on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities.
UNESCO Institute for Statistics
A source for cross-nationally comparable statistics on education, science and technology, culture, and communication for more than 200 countries and territories.
World Bank Data
Data is accessible by country, indicator, or topic, or via a specific database such as World Development Indicators, Gender Statistics, Education Statistics, the Poverty and Equity Database, or one of many others.
World Health Organization Statistics
The World Health Statistics series is WHO’s annual compilation of health statistics for its 194 Member States.

What is SPSS?

SPSS, short for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, is used by researchers for various kinds of complex statistical data analysis. It is a software package designed to manage and analyze social science data.

The Core Functions of SPSS:

Statistics Program - has many statistical functions, including frequencies, cross-tabulation, and bivariate statistics
Modeler Program - used to build and validate predictive models
Text Analytics for Surveys Program - helps researchers uncover insights from responses to open-ended questions
Visualization Designer Program - used to create a wide variety of visuals including density charts, radial boxplots, etc.
Data Management Solutions - allows researchers to perform case selection, create derived data, and perform file reshaping

Tutorials on SPSS

For step-by-step instructions and examples, try out these tutorials:

SPSS Tutorials | Kent State University
Step-by-step tutorials for SPSS created by the Statistical Consulting Department at Kent State University.
SPSS Tutorials | London School of Economics and Political Science

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Databases for Statistics & Datasets

Websites for Statistics & Datasets

What is SPSS?

Tutorials on SPSS

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