How Do I Find ~ Statistics and Data

NOTICE

With the January 20, 2025 change in presidential administrations, data on many government web sites has disappeared or is no longer accessible. There are many efforts underway to try to preserve and make historical and current government data available to researchers and the public. In this guide we've compiled a list of articles about these efforts, recommended best practices, data preservation repositories, and alternative resources to assist Hamilton researchers.

See: U.S. Government Data 2025 Resources

More than 1,000,000 statistics on 80,000 topics from around 18,000 sources. Statistics:

Over 1,000,000 statistics from four different databases: German, English, French and Spanish

• Forecasts & surveys: 5-year forecasts on hot topics and exclusive surveys among consumers and experts
• Infographics: Easy and appealing visualization of topical events
• Topics: Over 80,000 topics are the ideal starting point for your research
• Studies & reports: Studies database containing over 32,000 external studies
• Digital Market Outlook: Detailed analyses and in-depth evaluations for various digital markets
• Consumer Market Outlook: Detailed analyses and in-depth evaluations for the consumer goods sector
• Companies: Company database for over 5,000 companies
• Publication Finder: Publication database containing over 1 million studies, reports and other documents in German or English

• Visually explore demographic data
  • Demographic data, maps, and 500,000 variables.
• Tell a story with data
  • Use the interactive tools to easily create and share maps, presentations and tables, or compare and analyze data and discover amazing facts.
• Advanced exploration tools
  • Access current and historical demographic data, create reports and download data in convenient formats quickly and easily.

What content is available on Social Explorer?

• The US Decennial Census (1790 to 2020 (preliminary data) and the American Community Survey (2005 to 2024).
• Specialized U.S. data resources include the House Price Index (1994 to 2022), Low Income Housing Tax Credit (1987 to 2019), the FBI Uniformed Crime Report (2010 to 2019), Religious Congregations and Membership Study (1980 to 2020), and County Health Rankings and Roadmaps Program data (2010 to 2023).

Getting Started with Social Explorer

1. Connect to Social Explorer and Sign up for an Account to save maps, tables and projects.
2. Login to your Account.

Note: Maps/Tables/Projects can be saved, exported, emailed, shared with collaborators, and embedded into a webpage.

Create a Table

1. Connect to Social Explorer and Login to your Account.
2. To access Data, click Tables.
3. Select American Community Surveys (5-Year Estimates). Click the down arrow to the right. Select the ACS 2015-2019 (5-year Estimate). Click Begin Report.
4. Select your Geography (suggest you start with Place - Utica). Under State, select New York. Then Utica city, New York.
5. If you know the Census tracts for Utica, select Census Tracts instead.
6. Click Add.
7. Select your Variables. Notice you can search by Keyword. There is also a tab for Premade Reports.
8. Click Add.
9. Then click Show Results to view your report.
10. Your table/report can be exported in a variety of formats.

For more help, please consult the Social Explorer Training Modules.
How to cite information on Social Explorer.

Make a Map

1. Connect to Social Explorer and Login to your Account.
2. From the dashboard, click Explore Maps. On the United States map click Explore.
3. You should now have a map of population density of the United States by state.
4. Watch the YouTube video.

Explore the Mapping Features and Options

1. Zoom in on the map to your hometown. Select Auto Adjust (lower right corner) to normalize the data as you zoom in and out. To the right of Auto Adjust, click the ... to change the color palette.
2. More options, in addition to geography and visualizations, are available in the upper left of the screen, under the 3-line horizontal hamburger menu.
3. Choose your data and location. Explore features like Mask map data to isolate a geographic area, and the Calendar feature to see data changes over a period of time.

Create a Map

1. Go back to the dashboard and click Explore Maps. On the United States map click Explore.
2. You should now have a map of population density of the United States by state.
3. Click Change data to map a different set of data 
4. A list of topics should appear. Choose your topic of interest. You may need to change the year of data to change from the default data source which is currently the American Community Survey 2024 (ACS).
5. Once you've selected a data point, close out of the data choice panel. Your map should update. 
6. To view the data by county, select the drop down that says by State and change the Geography to County. 
7. Scroll to zoom in. Roll over a county to see data for that county. 
8. Refine your map's geography and visualization.
9. Adjust the geographical level: By default, the map automatically shows data at different levels (e.g., state, county, or tract) depending on how far you are zoomed in. To change this manually, look for the "Change geography level" option in the map menu.
10. Change visualization type: In the map menu, click "Change visualization type" to switch between display options. For example, use Shading for normalized measures like percentages and Bubbles or Dot Density for counts.
11. Advanced tools are available such as Compare maps, Filter data, and the ability to upload and visualize your data.
12. To Save or Export your map, click Save or Export.
13. You can access all your saved projects under My Projects on the dashboard.

For more help, please consult the Social Explorer Training Modules.
How to cite information on Social Explorer.

• 65+ billion data points
• 550+ source databases
• 90+ data providers
• 16 major subject categories

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Macro-level Data Available Online

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Macro-level Data Available Online

Micro-level Data Available Online

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