Selected Statistical Resources for Sociologists:
Emory's Electronic Data Center
General Social Science Data Resources
U.S./Domestic Data Sources
International Data Sources
CD-ROM/Non-Web Databases
Emory's Electronic Data Center (217 Woodruff Library)
http://einstein.library.emory.edu - The Data Center home page
http://einstein.library.emory.edu/links.shtml - The Data Freeway, a thematically-organized collection of links to on-line data sources
http://einstein.library.emory.edu/help_index.shtml - Help Pages for databases and data management
http://einstein.library.emory.edu/citation_guide.html - Guide for citation of electronic data sources
http://einstein.library.emory.edu/contact.shtml - Data Center contact information and hours
GENERAL SOCIAL SCIENCE DATA RESOURCES
ICPSR (Inter-University
Consortium for Political and Social Research)
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/
The ICPSR is the largest collection of Social Science Data in the world. Topics included in the archive
include: economics, government, health care, crime, education, etc. This resource is also available via
Databases at Emory. The Data Center
also maintains an archive of ready-to-use ICPSR datasets which are accessible via the search engine on the Data
Center home page.
Fedstats
http://www.fedstats.gov/
Fedstats is a good starting place for data on the United States and contains
links statistical resources produced by the US government.
Lexis-Nexis Statistical
Lexis-Nexis Statistical, which is available via Databases at Emory, allows patrons to
search for statistics from the U.S. government and other sources and download them directly into Microsoft
Excel.
U.S./DOMESTIC DATA SOURCES
Courts, Criminal Justice, and Judicial Politics:
Bureau of Justice Statistics
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/
The BJS provides a wealth of crime and criminal justice data compiled by the U.S. government and links to
available data on other government websites.
National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD)
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACJD/
The NACJD at the ICPSR contains a wealth of data relevant for scholars interested in crime/criminology. The
data cover topics such as offical crime statistics (at the national and state levels), surveys on attitudes
towards crime, surveys of crime victims, and the criminal justice system.
Demographics, Population, and Social Indicators:
American Fact Finder
http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en
The American Fact Finder is an excellent starting point for data from the 1990 and 2000 versions of the U.S.
Census.
Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA)
http://www.thearda.com/
The ARDA contains many datasets pertaining to religion, including both surveys on religious attitudes and data
on denominations and denomination membership.
Cultural Policy and the Arts National Data Archive (CPANDA)
http://www.cpanda.org/data/
Princeton University's Cultural Policy and the Arts National
Data Archive contains many datasets pertaining to participation in
the arts and to "cultural policy."
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
http://nces.ed.gov/
The NCES is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data and statistics in the United States and in various
other countries. For quick reference, researchers should check out the following page on the NCES website:
http://nces.ed.gov/quicktables/.
Health Data:
National Survey of Family Growth, Cycle 6, 2002 (NSFG)
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg.htm
The NSFG is an on-going survey series focusing on matters of family life/history and reproductive health. The
topics covered include schooling, family background, marriage histories, contraceptive use, and pregnancy outcomes,
with addtional variables for religion, race/ethnicity, and employment.
The EDC has the latest version of the NSFG availabe on CD with the data ready for use in SAS, SPSS, or Stata
formats. Earlier versions of the SSEDL are accessible via the
Social Science Electronic Data
Library (see below).
Social Science Electronic Data Library (SSEDL)
http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/emory?id=emory&db=SSEDL
The Social Science Electronic Data Library is an archive of over 300 datasets covering a variety of topic areas,
including Adolescent Pregnancy, Aging, AIDS/STD's, the American Family, Disability in the US, and Maternal Drug
Abuse. The archive is well-indexed and allows variable-level searches. This resource is also available via
Databases at Emory. Many of the older
studies are also available on CD-ROM's in the Data Center.
Public Opinion and Survey Data:
General Social Survey (GSS)
http://www.norc.org/projects/General+Social+Survey.htm
The GSS measures public opinion in the United States on a wide variety of topics of interest to social scientists. The survey,
which began in the early 1970's, provides a (nearly) annual perspective on American attitudes toward government, life, race,
religion, and other social issues. The link here is to the GSS homepage within the National Opinion Research Center.
Sites where researchers can extract and download
specific variables of interest are listed here. The
SDA Archive at Berkeley also holds GSS data from 1972 to 2006.
Roper Center for Public Opinion Research
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/
The Roper Center is one of the country's premier centers for polling data. The
iPOLL interface may be of particular
use because it allows users to search through surveys at the question level. This resource is also available via
Databases at Emory.
INTERNATIONAL DATA SOURCES
Comparative Political Economy/International Political Economy:
Comparative Welfare States Data Set (CWSDS)
http://www.lisproject.org/publications/welfaredata/welfareaccess.htm
The CWSDS is a joint effort by comparative welfare-state scholars such as Evelyne Huber, Charles Ragin,
John D. Stephens, and Duane Swank. The data cover 18 OECD countries from 1960 onwards and include many
economic, political, and policy variables.
International Labour Organization
http://www.ilo.org
The ILO is the main international labor-rights advocacy group in the world and has brought together a variety of
information about labor rights and working conditions internationally. You can access their databases directly
at
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/support/lib/dblist.htm.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) International Financial Statistics
http://www.imfstatistics.org/imf/imfbrowser.aspx?branch=ROOT
The IFS is a standard source of statistics on various aspects of international
and domestic finance. Please note that this site is restricted to the Emory community. This resource is also
available via Databases at Emory.
There is also a CD-ROM version of the IFS available in the Data Center.
Penn World Tables
PWT is a good starting point for basic world economic data during the
period 1950-2004. The most recent version of the PWT is available at http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/.
An older version with coverage from 1950-1992 (and some variables not
yet available in the newest version) can be found at http://datacentre.chass.utoronto.ca/pwt/.
SourceOECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
http://new.sourceoecd.org
SourceOECD is an online service that provides full-text access to
OECD studies, periodicals, and statistics. Data are available both via multiple statistical periodicals in .pdf
format and a wide range of databases. The topics covered include an extensive range of economic indicators, social
expenditures, health indicators and policy, foreign aid, and telecommunications.
This resource is also available via
Databases at Emory.
World Development Indicators (World Bank)
http://devdata.worldbank.org/dataonline/
The World Development Indicators Website provides convenient access to almost 600
indicators on over 200 countries. The subjects covered include economic, social, and environmental data. Data
are generally available from 1960 forward. This resource is also available via
Databases at Emory. There is also a CD version
of the WDI available in the Data Center.
Public Opinion and Survey Data:
Afrobarometers
http://www.afrobarometer.org/
The Afrobarometers are a series of surveys conducted across a dozen Sub-Saharan African countries with the
intent of gathering data on social and political attitudes towards subjects such as political participation,
national identity, civil society, and other such topics. The series is modelled in part after the Eurobarometer
series (see below). The Data Center has many Afrobarometer data files available
here.
International Social Survey Programme (ISSP)
http://www.issp.org/
The ISSP is an ongoing effort devoted to cross-national research on social attitudes. In addition to asking
general questions about attitudes towards various social issues, the ISSP series also includes special topic modules
focusing on matters such as national idenitity, the role of government, and gender roles. The Data Center has
many ISSP data files available
here.
Latinobarómetro Data
http://einstein.library.emory.edu/Latinobarometro-Data.shtml
The Latinobarómetro is an annual survey conducted amongst 18 countries in Latin America. The survey, which has been
conducted since 1995, asks respondents about topics such as globalization, democratic governance and political institutions,
"social capital," the environment, and gender issues. The Data Center has microdata files for this survey from 1995 through
2005.
World Values Surveys Series
http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/
The World Values Survey is "a worldwide investigation of sociocultural and political change. It is conducted by a
network of social scientist at leading universities all around world. The survey is performed on nationally
representative samples in almost 80 societies on all six inhabited continents." It is an excellent source for
cross-national survey data and is a widely-referenced resource. The Data Center has all four "waves" of the World
Values Survey available here.
Social Indicators:
GenderStats - the Database of Gender Statistics
http://devdata.worldbank.org/genderstats/
GenderStats is a database with international/comparative data on the status of women and includes topics such as
poverty, demographics, health, and political participation. The
Data Query System may
be particularly helpful and has an interface similar to that of the World Development Indicators
(see below).
Global Education Database
http://qesdb.cdie.org/ged/index.html
The U.S. Agency for International Development's Global Education Database (GED) allows users to search for international
education statistics. Users can search for specific variables and/or countries and save data in Excel files.
Health, Nutrition, and Population (HNPStats)
http://go.worldbank.org/N2N84RDV00
HNPStats is a very good source from the World Bank for data on health indicators and policies and population
figures, along with basic macroeconomic indicators.
CD-ROM/NON-WEB DATABASES
Area Resource File (ARF)
The Area Resource File is a database of health resources data, measured at the county level for over 6,000 indicators.
The information includes measures of employment in various health professions; availability of health facilities; frequency
of utilization; hospital and Medicare expenditures; and demographic and geographic indicators by county. The database is
installed on all of the EDC's public workstations. Data from the ARF are
also available here and
from the ICPSR.
Banks Cross-National Time-Series (CNTS) Data Archive
The Banks CNTS Data Archive contains time-series data from 1815-2005 on
a wide range of political, economic, and social
indicators. An older version of the archive is available
here.
DataFerrett
The DataFerrett is an excellent
tool for creating subsets of data from the
Current Population Surveys. The Ferrett also allows for easy access to data from series such as the
Behavior Risk Factor Survey Series and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. The files that the Ferrett
creates can be exported into SAS, SPSS, or Stata.
Neighborhood Change Data Base
The Neighborhood Change Data Base contains data from the 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 censuses and allows users
to convert data from pre-2000 censuses into 2000 census tracts to show demographic and economic changes over
time in given areas.
World Bank Africa Database (WBAD)
The WBAD is similar to the World Development Indicators (see above), but with a more intensive focus on
African countries. The WBAD contains over 1100 indicators, with time-series coverage extending back to 1965
depending on the country and variable.
A complete list of the Data Center's non-web databases is available here. The databases are accessible via the Data Center's public workstations.
Home | Analyze Data Online | Help Resources | Contacts & Hours | Emory General Libraries