POLI 691H: Honors Seminar in Research Design: Selected Data & Statistics
Remember
You may not be able to find exactly what you'd like. Be prepared to be flexible on one or more of your question elements.
Finding Data - Strategies
- Define the specific elements of your question: time, geography and subject matter.
- Consider what organizations might pay for data collection on your topic.
- government (international, national, state, local...)
- trade associations
- non-profits
- academe (directly from a researcher or indirectly from a repository)
- Read the literature for possible sources, but beware that sources noted in articles may not be openly available.
- Will data be costly in terms of money or time to obtain? Do you have the requisite knowledge to manipulate it?
- Cite your data to make them easier for others to find. (The linked site provides guidelines for how to format data citations.)
Data Links
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ICPSRYou create your own login but must email ICPSR from your UNC account to request its authentication to be able to download datasets (documentation files are openly available). Search "Find Data" directly or its Bibliography of Related Literature.
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American National Election Studies (ANES)Basis of the Squire Index studies.
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Book of the States byCall Number: Davis Library Service Desk (1st floor) JK2403 .B6 v.52(2020)Publication Date: 2020Survey of various issues across all states. Includes data tables and topical essays. (Online version is *not* recommended.)
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Census Data (UNC Libraries' guide)Strongly recommend Social Explorer for creating data extracts but this guide covers many additional topics to better understand the data.
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CQ Voting and Elections CollectionProvides detailed voting data for the study of American politics, both past and present. Presidential, Senatorial, Congressional, and Gubernatorial candidates are covered, as are campaigns and elections, political parties, and voters and demographics.
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Data PlanetLook for citations to identify other data sources. Also enables graphing data from different sources that are included here.
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Data to Study Racial Inequity (UNC Libraries' guide)Library guide to a few sources across multiple topics.
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Hall of Justice (U.S. criminal justice datasets)From the web site: "Hall of Justice, a project of the Sunlight Foundation, is a robust, searchable inventory of publicly available criminal justice datasets and research. While not comprehensive, Hall of Justice contains nearly 10,000 datasets and research documents from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories and the federal government. The data was collected between September 2014 and October 2015. We have tagged datasets so that users can search across the inventory for broad topics, ranging from death in custody to domestic violence to prison population. The inventory incorporates government as well as academic data."
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International Country Risk Guide CountryDataProvides access to the data underlying the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) publication. It includes MONTHLY averages of political risk and economic indicators; Coplin-O'Leary ratings and forecasts; and some general geographic and political information for 145 countries from 1984 to present. Dates of coverage for individual countries vary.
Note: Users will need to allow popups to enable this database to work properly. -
Roper Center's iPollLink automatically authenticates you by ONYEN login; you'll just need to select UNC as your institution upon entry. Offers data from thousands of opinion polls as far back as the 1930s. Earlier polls may not be digitized but can be requested for priority processing--however, processing time may vary.
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PolicyMapAn online data and mapping tool that enables government, commercial, non-profit and academic institutions to access data about communities and markets across the US. Use it for research, market studies, business planning, site selection, grant applications and impact analysis.
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StatistaContains statistics, infographics, industry and market research reports and publicly-available data for over 25 countries. There is a special focus on digital markets as well as emerging industries and social trends. Collections of statistics can be downloaded in Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF.
Note: UNC Chapel Hill currently has full access to Statista with the exception of the Global Consumer Survey and Market Studies.
Understanding Data
- Read the technical documentation!
- Consider the purpose for which data were collected, and their limitations.
- Ask the experts (both about finding and understanding data).
Review the Finding Data Slides
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Finding Data Slide-deckSlides used in class
Data Services Librarian
Michele Hayslett
Contact:
Subjects
Data Management
Numeric Data
Census Data
Locating Data
If you would like to request we acquire data, please carefully read the guidelines at http://library.unc.edu/data/purchase/.
Website
Data Management
Numeric Data
Census Data
Locating Data
If you would like to request we acquire data, please carefully read the guidelines at http://library.unc.edu/data/purchase/.
Getting Help
Virtual Workshops
Odum Institute Short Courses: survey methodology, quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, statistical computing
Davis Library Research Hub: data visualization software, web mapping, Census data, scripting
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