Places to find data

Places to Find Data

Finding the right data to answer your particular question is part of your responsibility for this assignment. Public data sets are available from hundreds of different websites, on virtually any topic. You might not be able to find the exact data that you want, but you should be able to find data that is relevant to your topic. You may also want to refine your research question so that it can be more clearly addressed by the data that you found. But be creative! Go find the data that you want!

Below is a list of places to get started, but this list should be considered grossly non-exhaustive:

• Data is Plural tinyletter and associated spreadsheet

• FiveThirtyEight data archive

• Data.gov 186,000+ datasets!

• Google dataset search a version of google that just searches for data. Works just like regular google, so you can write things like -site:figshare.com if you want to exclude figshare results (for example).

• Data and Story Library (DASL). (This, and more ideas from Robin Lock.)

• Jo Hardin at Pomona College has a nice list of data sources on her website.

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

• U.S. Census Bureau

• Gapminder, data about the world.

• IRE and NICAR are good resources for the types of data journalists care about. For example, Energy data sources and Chrys Wu’s resource page.

• Nathan Yau’s (old) guide to finding data on the internet