Guides: How Do I Find ~ Statistics and Data: Home

NOTICE - U.S. Government Data 2025

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

Subscription Databases

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
- 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).

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

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General Data - Databases

Harvard Dataverse
A repository for research data, mainly replication data sets and code for published journal articles in social sciences.

ICPSR
A MyData account is required to download members-only data and some publicly available data. Over 700+ studies are available for online data analysis (i.e., no downloading required) using Survey Documentation Analysis (SDA).
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research data archive of more than 800,000 files of research in the social sciences. It hosts 16 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.
Help Center
Resources for Instructors
Teaching with Data
Note: Questions regarding data holdings should be directed to: Lynn Mayo, ICPSR Official Representative at Hamilton College, Burke Library, 315-859-4746.
Social Explorer
An online demographic research tool. Contains all historical US census data from 1790 to the present, and annual updates from the American Community Survey. Visualize data with customizable, user-friendly maps. Create interactive maps and reports to illustrate, analyze, and understand demography and social change. Save and share projects in your personal MyExplorer account.
How to cite information on Social Explorer
Statista
A statistics portal with data from over 22,500 sources -- private, public, and proprietary from North America, Europe, and Asia. Also included are U.S. industry reports, country reports, and colorful infographics.
All statistics can be downloaded as PowerPoint, Excel, and JPEG files, along with the original source with full citations in APA, Chicago, Harvard, and MLA formats.

Google Dataset Search
A Google search engine for locating online data.

General Data - U.S.

Macro-level Data Available Online

Social Explorer
An online demographic research tool. Contains all historical US census data from 1790 to the present, and annual updates from the American Community Survey. Visualize data with customizable, user-friendly maps. Create interactive maps and reports to illustrate, analyze, and understand demography and social change. Save and share projects in your personal MyExplorer account.
How to cite information on Social Explorer
Statista
A statistics portal with data from over 22,500 sources -- private, public, and proprietary from North America, Europe, and Asia. Also included are U.S. industry reports, country reports, and colorful infographics.
All statistics can be downloaded as PowerPoint, Excel, and JPEG files, along with the original source with full citations in APA, Chicago, Harvard, and MLA formats.
Statistical Abstract of the United States
The standard source for U.S. statistics, published since 1878. Coverage: 2013-present.
See also:
Historical Statistics of the United States: 1600-2000
Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 1878-2012

Federal Reserve Economic Data
A database of over 3,000 economic times series.
Data.gov
U.S. government open data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more.

Micro-level Data Available Online

U.S. Census Data: data.census.gov
Easy access to census data in the form of maps, tables, and reports. data.census.gov resources include 2000 and 2018 census data. 1990 data can be downloaded from the census FTP site.
Help: Video Tutorials

Roper Center for Public Opinion Research and iPOLL
NOTE: Registration required to view questions/results and to download data sets.
The largest collection of poll data anywhere. Broad topical coverage of opinions and behavior on social issues, politics, pop culture, and international affairs. Coverage: 1935-present.
Video Tutorials

American National Election Studies (ANES)
Surveys on voting, public opinion, and political participation in the U.S., 1948-current.
General Social Survey
The GSS contains a standard core of demographic, behavioral and attitudinal questions tracking the opinions of Americans, plus topics of special interest. Many of the core questions have remain unchanged since 1972 to facilitate time trend studies.The GSS takes the pulse of America, and has tracked the opinions of Americans over the last four decades.
Pew Research Center Data Sets
Pew research focuses on U.S. politics and policy; journalism and media; internet, science and technology; religion and public life; Hispanic trends; global attitudes and trends; and U.S. social and demographic trends.

General Data - International

Macro-level Data Available Online

Quality of Government
The QoG Institute's standard data set contains general country indicators (population, education, energy, environment, economy, etc.) from 100+ primary data sources, as well as its original variables related to quality of government, transparency, and public administration. It also offers other data sets focused on OECD countries and regions of the European Union.
Penn World Table
Penn World Table (current version 9.1) is a database with information on relative levels of income, output, input and productivity, covering 182 countries between 1950 and 2017.
UNdata
Search across over 14 UN statistical databases.
World Bank Databases
Comprehensive selection of economic, social and environmental indicators, drawing on data from the World Bank and more than 30 partner agencies. More than 900 indicators for 210 economies. Coverage: 1960-present.

Statista
A statistics portal with data from over 22,500 sources -- private, public, and proprietary from North America, Europe, and Asia. Also included are U.S. industry reports, country reports, and colorful infographics.
All statistics can be downloaded as PowerPoint, Excel, and JPEG files, along with the original source with full citations in APA, Chicago, Harvard, and MLA formats.

ASEANstats
Association of Southeast Asian Nations database of key Indicators, macroeconomic indicators, statistics on trade in goods, trade in services, foreign direct investments, tourism, and transport.
Eurostat
European Union demographic, economic, industry, and environment data.
International Statistical Agencies
Compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Micro-level Data Available Online

World Values Survey
Survey of almost 100 countries which contain almost 90 percent of the world’s population, using a common questionnaire. The WVS is the largest non-commercial, cross-national, time series investigation of human beliefs and values.
European Values Survey
The European Values Study (EVS) is a large-scale, cross-national, repeated cross-sectional survey research program on basic human values, such as family, work, environment, perceptions of life, politics and society, religion and morality, national identity. Covers 1980 - 2008 (every nine years) and 47 European countries/regions.

Resources Available In-person

Cross-National Time-series Data Archive (CD-ROM)
Call Number: Location: Burke Reserve Desk HA154 .C76

A longitudinal data series. The archive has 194 variables and contains data for over 200 country units. Variables cover demographic, social, political, and economic topics. Data files are in an Excel format. Coverage: 1815-2010 (excluding the two modern wartime periods, 1914-1918 and 1940-1945).

Resources for Locating Data

Google Dataset Search

A search engine for datasets.
Using a simple keyword search, users can discover datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the Web.

Data.gov
U.S. government open data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more.

Data Citation Index
Discover research data available in a growing number of data repositories worldwide. About 80 repositories are currently indexed by the Data Citation Index. Each record also includes a recommended citation for the resource, helping to make data easier to cite. Coverage: 1900-present.

Reference Guide to Data Sources by Julia Bauder
Publication Date: 2014

This guide focuses on freely available, online sources of data, primarily social science quantitative data.
Numeric Data Services and Sources for the General Reference Librarian by Lynda M. Kellam; Katharin Peter
Call Number: Research Desk Z711 .K45 2011

Publication Date: 2011

Chapter 4 lists some standard and readily available statistical and numeric data sources.

How Do I Find ~ Statistics and Data

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