Having trouble accessing government information? See the Libraries’ guide to Alternative Sources for Federal Information and Data.
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.
Contact Michele if you need help finding something>>>>>
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.)
Special Case: Federal Data
NOTE: Federal government datasets are in flux right now. If you have trouble finding something, please have a look this guide for finding alternative sources, or contact Michele.
Data Links
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ICPSRCreate your own login using the Access through Your Institution button or with your UNC email address 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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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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ICPSR's Social Media ArchiveContains a wide range of data collected from large-scale social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit, as well as smaller, more specialized data sets focused on specific research topics. These data sets have been collected and curated by researchers from around the world, and they cover various topics such as political communication, online behavior, and social networks. The data in our archive takes two forms. They can be public, i.e., available for immediate download, and/or restricted, i.e., available within our secure data enclave after receiving approval following a submitted restricted data application.
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American National Election Studies (ANES)Formally established in the late 1970s, ANES nevertheless has history back to the 1940s. *The* national time-series research resource on U.S. elections.
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Bureau of Economic Analysis’ GDP by StateGross Domestic Product is available for states as well as for the country.
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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 CollectionLook for subtle Download Data link at the top right to download in bulk. Note that these datasets can include breakdowns by party, but not demographics. ANES data may be better if you want demographics.
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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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Eurobarometer (via ICPSR)Long-standing survey of public opinion in European countries, administered to be comparable across countries.
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EuroStats' Data BrowserAccess to data of the European Union.
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Mintel AcademicContains market research data and reports on consumer markets and products, demographics, consumer buying behavior and motivations, trends in global consumer markets. Many reports include Databooks with downloadable consumer survey data. U.S.-focused with some global coverage.
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NC State Board of Elections' Results & Data(Note the drop-down menu in the top banner for additional data options.)
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PolicyMapAccess social, economic, health and demographic data about U.S. communities and markets in this online mapping tool. View data on map, in table or chart format, and download via the download button. Reports provide a summary snapshot of an area: Community Profile, Community Health Profile, Rental Housing Report, and Housing Mortgage Report.
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s weapons & ammunition seizure statisticsMonthly and annual statistics. Page allows you to create custom visualizations with a variety of variables, but also has a link to download the raw data (near the top of the page).
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U.S. Treaties in ForceDates might look old, but these documents are updated continually (there is no longer a printed book).
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USA Trade OnlineIncludes import/export data for states.
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World Development Indicators (WDI Online)Present and historical data for many countries over many years. Includes demographic, social, economic, financial, natural resources, and environmental topics.
Text Analysis Sources
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NC Supreme Court Slip OpinionsSlip opinions for many years, as they are released.
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Replication Data for: Do Male and Female [State] Legislators Have Different Twitter Communication Styles?A dataset with nearly 4 million Tweets by all American state legislators, coded for topic and ideology through supervised learning. Author is a Political Science professor at UCSD. Deposited in the State Politics & Policy Quarterly Dataverse, hosted at UNC by the Odum Institute.
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Washington Post historic archive corpusTextual corpus from late 1970s through 2022.
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Text and Data Mining library guideMore sources are noted in this guide, and also contacts for text analysis support.
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).
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
Library Data Services Events: data visualization software, web mapping, Census data, scripting
Odum Institute Short Courses: survey methodology, quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, statistical computing (vary whether online or in person)