How Do I Find ~ Statistics and Data

Define Your Research Question
State your research question without describing the sources or data. This will help you identify a variable or variables (underlined below). 

Examples: 

Q1. Which characteristics of voters explain their vote choices in the upcoming 2020 presidential election? 

Q2. Do free trade agreements (FTAs) promote the members' bilateral international trade? 

Define Your Measurements
Find a specific language that best describes your concepts.  This will help you choose a data set. 

Examples:

Q1, characteristics of voters:

• education: the highest degree that the person completed
• income: annual household income, in USD
• race: the person's self-identified race

Q2, countries' bilateral international trade

• Annual bilateral trade volume, including imports and exports, in USD

Identify Population, Unit of Analysis, and Unit of Observation
Who are you interested in studying? Who or what is being described by your variable(s)? What is the unit in your data set? This will also help you choose a data set. 

(Micro-level) <-----Individuals, households, cities, states/provinces, countries -----> (Macro-level)

Examples:

Q1: Those who are eligible to vote in the 2020 presidential election, at the individual-level

Q2: Country dyads in the world, for all countries in the world

Identify Time Frame and Frequency
For what point in time do you want to know this about the people, institutions, or products you identified? How often do you want to know it about them?

Examples:

Q1: The data are collected for the 2020 election year, and are not repeated over time. 

Q2: As many years as possible, repeated every year

Identify the Group Structure of Your Data
Are you looking for data collected at regular intervals over time? Identifying what sort of time series may be helpful as you search for data.

• Cross-sectional: collected at the same point of time for several individuals
• Longitudinal/Panel: data collected at a sequence of time points for each of a sample of individuals
• Time Series: data collected at a sequence of time points, usually at a uniform frequency
• Pooled cross-sectional time series: a mixture of time series data and cross-section data

Think about Your Data Analysis Methods and Tools

Don't know which data analysis method to choose? The model choice depends on your variable types and your data structure. Use this flowchart and the UCLA IDRE's guide to find the method for your analysis and its example code.  

Also, choose the statistical package for your analysis. For example, for quantitative analyses, people often use R, SPSS, Stata, or Python. For qualitative analyses, NVivo and MAXQDA are used often. All of the programs are either freely available or offered by Hamilton College. If you need assistance with using these packages, contact Ahra Wu (axwu@hamilton.edu).

We are also building Blackboard learning modules for these programs. Currently, a Stata Blackboard module is available to students. Contact Ahra Wu (axwu@hamilton.edu) to gain access to the Stata module. 

* Adapted from Nicole Scholtz' guide to Finding Data at the University of Michigan

Statista

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

Social Explorer

Visually Explore Demographic Data

• 220 years of demographic data, 25,000 maps, hundreds of profile reports, 40 billion data elements and 335,000 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 2010) and the American Community Survey (2005 to 2018).
• Specialized U.S. data resources include the House Price Index (1994 to 2018), Low Income Housing Tax Credit (1987 to 2019), the FBI Uniformed Crime Report (2010 to 2018), Religious Congregations and Membership Study (1980 to 2010), and County Health Rankings and Roadmaps Program data (2010 to 2016).
• International data resources include the United Kingdom Census (2011), Canadian Census (2011), Eurostat (1990, 2000, 2010 to 2014), and World Development Indicators (annually since 2013).

Macro-level Data Available Online

Micro-level Data Available Online

Macro-level Data Available Online

Micro-level Data Available Online

Resources Available In-person