Data Sources - Sociology 215: Graduate Research Methods (Beattie - Spring 2025) - LibGuides at University of California Merced

2025 Alert - U.S. Federal Data

In January 2025, the current administration began removing crucial data from public, federal government websites. Public data and statistics support everyone in the United States by allowing for informed decision-making. To this end, UC Merced Library put together an online research guide to help you find archived sources of this data or alternative options.

Looking for U.S. Federal Data?
by Bronwen Maxson Last Updated Mar 14, 2025 936 views this year

Do You Need Statistics or Data?

Caption: A table explaining the differences between data, a data set, and statistics.
Data	Raw Numbers Counts of individual events or services Collected at local, state, national, etc. levels
Data set	Major unit of data storage and retrieval Data collected & organized according to criteria May or may not represent entire population
Statistics	Data analyzed and summarized Most data on websites are compiled statistics Presented as percentage, graph, table, map, etc.

For more assistance with data, see the Tech Issues & More Help page of this guide.

Recommended Databases

International

IPUMS International This link opens in a new window 1960 - present. Provides access to the world's largest collection of publicly available individual-level census data and source documents from 1960 forward. Free registration required to view and download data.
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research This link opens in a new window A data archive of more than 500,000 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.
ICPSR Bibliography of Data-Related Literature This link opens in a new window Citations of known published and unpublished works resulting from analyses of data held in the ICPSR archive.

U.S.

Social Explorer This link opens in a new window Access to over 500,000 data indicators and over 220 years of data for the United States, including all Decennial Censuses, American Community Surveys and many other datasets.
Medline Plus This link opens in a new window Sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Provides information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues and links to medical research and information about clinical trials.
National Survey of Family Growth This link opens in a new window Collects information on family life, marriage and divorce, pregnancy, infertility, use of contraception, and men’s and women’s health. Via the National Center for Health Statistics of the CDC.

California

California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI) This link opens in a new window Collects data and shares information in regards to California’s healthcare infrastructure, with datasets and reports on healthcare quality and utilization, the healthcare workforce and more. Formerly California's Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.
California Health Interview Survey This link opens in a new window CHIS is the nation's largest state health survey. Conducted every two years on a wide range of health topics, CHIS data gives a detailed picture of the health and health care needs of California's large and diverse population.
California Open Data Repository This link opens in a new window Access to more than 2500 datasets covering topics such as natural resources, health, economy, demographics and more in the state of California. Via the California Open Data Portal.

Selected Data Repositories

Dryad Dryad is a nonprofit repository for data underlying the international scientific and medical literature; home to University of California public datasets.
Figshare Repository of research output including posters, presentations data and code.
Harvard Dataverse Network (DVN) Harvard's Dataverse Network is an eclectic collection of datasets and data collections from the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) at Harvard University, covering a wide-range of subjects and disciplines, including scholarly journal replication archives.
Zenodo Project of the Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe, Zenodo originally served as a catch-all repository of EC funded research but has expanded to contain data submissions from world wide.

Data Aggregators

Data Citation Index (Web of Science) This link opens in a new window 1900 - present. Supports data discovery, reuse, and interpretation. Provides access to datasets in multiple repositories from a single destination.

Data.Gov U.S. Government’s open data resource including resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, and design data visualizations.

Sage Data This link opens in a new window A web-based research tool that provides access to data from licensed and public domain datasets from 80+ source organizations. It contains more than 157 billion data points from 12.6 billion datasets available in charts, maps, views, rankings, time series and tables. Also includes EASI Market Planner with 13 data sets covering consumer behavior, consumer expenditures, consumer price index, consumer spending analytics and more. Previously Data Planet.

d-Portal From the International Aid Transparency Initiative. Comprehensive open source data from hundreds of national governments, NGOs and multilateral organizations.
Our World in Data Our World in Data is an online publication from University of Oxford that shows how living conditions are changing. The aim is to give a global overview and to show changes over the very long run, so that we can see where we are coming from and where we are today.
The GDELT Project GDELT Project monitors the world's broadcast, print, and web news from nearly every country in over 100 languages and identifies the people, locations, organizations, themes, sources, emotions, counts, quotes, images and events driving our global society, creating a free open platform for computing.

Data Repository Lists & Search Tools

NIH Data Sharing Repositories
NIH-supported data repositories that make data accessible for reuse.
Open Access Directory Data Repository List
Comprehensive listing of repositories and databases for open data across a wide variety of subjects and disciplines.
Public Library of Science Recommended Repositories
A set of established repositories that are recognized and trusted within their respective communities, listed by subject area.
r3Data.org
Registry of Research Data Repositories; search or browse by subject, content type or country.
Royal Society of Chemistry Recommended Repositories
List of commonly used repositories recommended by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Scientific Data Recommended Repositories
Recommended repository list from Scientific Data (a Nature Research journal).

State & Local

Health Data & Statistics

America's Health Rankings for California (United Health Foundation)
California Department of Public Health (COVID-19 Data & Tools)
California Health Interview Survey (CHIS - UCLA) The nation's largest state health survey and a critical source of data on Californians as well as on the state's various racial and ethnic groups.
City Health Dashboard provides an array of regularly updated data specific to neighborhood and/or city boundaries – such as life expectancy, obesity, and children in poverty -- to improve the health and well-being of everyone in the community. From NYU Langone Health.
Cognability (Umich) Cognability is a way to measure how well your neighborhood can support cognitive health (the ability to think, learn, and remember clearly) as you age. Neighborhoods with places to be physically active, socially engaged, and keep your mind active may boost brain health. However, not everyone has access to these places.
County Health Rankings From the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute; provides data, evidence, guidance, and examples to build awareness of the multiple factors that influence health and support leaders in growing community power to improve health equity
Kidsdata.org Find data about the health and well being of children in communities across California.
NaNDA Data Repository National Neighborhood Data Archive. Open data for research questions that address “place” Social Determinants of Health Crime rates Police districts Polluting sites Public transit
RAND State Statistics
Rural Health Information Hub
State Health Facts: California (Kaiser Family Foundation)

International

World Health Statistics (WHO) by year, reports available as PDFs
Global Health Data Exchange (University of Washington)
OECD Data
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
World Bank Open Data Free access to global development data across a large range of indicators. Use the Databank tool to create data visualizations.
MEASURE DHS: Demographic & Health Surveys (The World Bank)

ICPSR Bibliography of Data-Related Literature This link opens in a new window Citations of known published and unpublished works resulting from analyses of data held in the ICPSR archive.

CIA World Factbook From the website: "The World Factbook provides basic intelligence on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, environment, communications, transportation, military, terrorism, and transnational issues for 266 world entities."
EuroStat
Statistical office of the European Union containing a wide range of statistics for EU member states and selected non-member countries.
UN Data
Economic, social, cultural, & demographic indicators from the United Nations and a selection of UN affiliated or related organizations.
UNESCO Institute of Statistics
Global data in the fields of education, science & technology, culture and communication.
United Nations Statistics Division

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Sociology 215: Graduate Research Methods (Beattie - Spring 2025)

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Dataset Search Tools

Locating Think Tank Data Sources

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Other Helpful Guides

2025 Alert - U.S. Federal Data

Do You Need Statistics or Data?