Research Guides: Government Information: Government Data and Statistics

Strategy For Finding Data.

Data & Statistics Guide/Mary Martin
See the more detailed LibGuide on researching Data & Statistics generally.

Ask the question: What organization or agency would likely collect this data?

Government Agencies? Government Agencies collect data at all levels to aid policy decisions. It is generally distributed free via the internet. Organizations ? Larger data sets are generally available in SPSS, Excel, SAS or Stata formats.

General Indexes/Databases for International Statistics

Sage Data This link opens in a new window
Why search here? Gateway to billions of datapoints from a range of organizations with valuable tools to help interpret and visualize selected data sets.
Content type: Data
Coverage dates: 1948-present
Language: English
Keywords: Data Planet Insight

Data.gov
The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

Statista This link opens in a new window
Why search here? Explore quantitative data and statistics from a wide range of international sources on a variety of industry and social topics.
Content type: Statistics, data, industry reports, reports, graphs
Coverage dates: 2008-present
Statista also provides a variety of reports and graphs about popular and current topics.
Language: English
ICPSR Data Archive This link opens in a new window
Why search here? Access data in various downloadable formats from a broad range of social science fields.
Content type: Data
Special Note: Some content requires an individual user account.
Language: English
Keywords: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research

IPUMS Terra
Terra Populus will integrate the world’s population and environmental data, including: Population censuses and surveys, Land cover information from remote sensing, Climate records from weather stations and Land use records from statistical agencies.

Topical International Databases

ILO (International Labor Organization)
Great database for all things labor-related.
WHO (World Health Organization)
The most comprehensive source of global heath statistics in existence.
IEA (International Energy Agency)
This is a very good, extensive source of information on global energy statistics.

International Organization Database Links

IMF Data This link opens in a new window
Why search here? Good for bank and government financial data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Content type: Data
Includes International Financial Statistics (1948-present), Government Finance Statistics, Balance of Payments Statistics (1948-present) and Direction of Trade Statistics (1980-present).
Language: English, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Spanish

Europa
Link to Europa;"The Gateway to the European Union". Most of the information is free.

UNdata This link opens in a new window
Why search here? Good for simultaneously searching major United Nations and other international statistical databases to access some of the oldest socioeconomic data available.
Content type: Data, economic data, statistics
Coverage dates: 1950-present
Includes current information on populations, trade, standard of living, and the environment.
Language: English
Keywords: UN Data

Databases for State & Local Data & Statistics

Sage Data This link opens in a new window
There are state and local datasets accessed through the Data Planet interface.
Language: English
Keywords: Data Planet Insight