Highly Recommended Data Sources
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Data.gov This link opens in a new window"The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government." Offers numerous free data sets in a searchable database.
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COVID-19 Data Repository - Open ICPSRA repository for data examining the social, behavioral, public health, and economic impact of the novel coronavirus global pandemic. This is a free self-publishing option for any researcher who wants to share data related to COVID-19.
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Google's Dataset SearchDataset Search enables users to find datasets stored across the Web through a simple keyword search. The tool surfaces information about datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the Web, making these datasets universally accessible and useful.
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UNdataDo keyword searches to find statistics from the United Nations on many topics including "Agriculture, Crime, Education, Employment, Energy, Environment, Health, HIV/AIDS, Human Development, Industry, Information and Communication Technology, National Accounts, Population, Refugees, Tourism, Trade, as well as the Millennium Development Goals Database.
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The Data and Story Library - DASL at StatLib"DASL (pronounced "dazzle") is an online library of datafiles and stories that illustrate the use of basic statistics methods. We hope to provide data from a wide variety of topics so that statistics teachers can find real-world examples that will be interesting to their students." Datasets can be browsed by topic or searched by keyword.
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Google Public Data ExplorerCreate visualizations of public data using this tool from Google. Includes data from international organizations, national statistical offices, non-governmental organizations, and research institutions.
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DataHub8000+ free datasets from the Open Knowledge Foundation. Varied topics. Includes many large datasets from national governments and numerous datasets related to economic development.
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Michigan GIS Open DataFree access to a variety of Michigan geospatial datasets.
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QuandlOffers a free platform with hundreds of free data sets from "central banks, exchanges, brokerages, governments, statistical agencies, think-tanks, academics, research firms and more. "
You must create a free account on the site to download data. Use Sign Up to create account. EMU does not have access to the premium data on this site, but there are many free data sets. -
re3data.org - Registry of Research Data Repositoriesre3data.org is a global registry of research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines.
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StatSci.org"A portal for statistical science, the discipline of statistics" offers a long list of links to data sets for teaching, as well as other resources on statistics.
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A Guide to Resources for Geospatial Academic Research, 2019.The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency provides numerous links to sources of geospatial data from U.S. agencies.
Free Sources of Data Sets on the Web
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American National Election Studies (ANES)To serve the research needs of social scientists, teachers, students, policy makers and journalists, the ANES produces high quality data from its own surveys on voting, public opinion, and political participation.
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Child & Family Data Archive (C&F Data Archive)"discover, access, and analyze data on early care, education, and families. C&F Data Archive hosts datasets about young children, their families and communities, and the programs that serve them."
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CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & EngagementProvides data tools on youth civic engagement.
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Crime Data Explorer - FBI"part of the FBI’s broader effort to modernize the reporting of national crime data. It allows you to view trends, download bulk data, and access the Crime Data API for reported crime at the national, state, and agency levels."
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Damodaran OnlineAswath Damodaran is a Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University. His research interests lie in valuation, portfolio management and applied corporate finance, and the data available here reflect those interests.
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Data.WorldData.World is a social network for data. People who sign up can search for, copy, analyze, and download data sets.
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DataWeb - USITCThe USITC Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb provides U.S. international trade statistics and U.S. tariff data. It includes U.S. import statistics, U.S. export statistics, U.S. tariffs, U.S. future tariffs and U.S. tariff preference information, as well as International trade data for years 1989- present.
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DataLab - National Center for Education Statistics"DataLab is a platform of web-based tools that provide the public with access to data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)." Includes data from several longitudinal surveys on education topics.
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Energy Information AdministrationMany types of detailed energy statistics (U.S. and international) on supply, prices, consumption, trade, environment, forecasts and analyses. Includes statistcs for many types of energy including alternative sources. Often historical statistics are included and frequently the statistics can be downloaded in Excel files.
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EUROSTATEurostat is the statistical office of the European Union situated in Luxembourg. Its provides economic and demographic statistics for Europe.
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Federal Contract Solicitation & Award NoticesNew set (2013) of .csv files obtained via the Freedom of Information Act from the General Services Administration. Contains solicitation and award notices for federal contracts for the years 2000-2013.
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Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)FRED offers US and international time series data from 86 sources.
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Fiscally Standardized Cities database - Lincoln Institute of Land Studies"The Fiscally Standardized Cities (FiSC) database makes it possible to compare local government finances for 112 of the largest U.S. cities across more than 120 categories of revenues, expenditures, debt, and assets."
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FIVE Project - DartmouthFree time-series data sets include: historical workstation sales, photolightography, breweries, and shipbuilding.
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General Social Survey"The GSS contains a standard ‘core’ of demographic and attitudinal questions, plus topics of special interest. Many of the core questions have been unchanged since 1972 to facilitate time trend studies as well as replication of earlier findings."
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Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) project" an annual assessment of the entrepreneurial activity, aspirations and attitudes of individuals across a wide range of countries." Can be downloaded to SPSS.
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Health and Medical Care Archive (HMCA)"to increase the understanding of and improve health and health care in the United States through secondary analysis of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-supported data collections."
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Health and Retirement StudyThis longitudinal panel study surveys a large sample of Americans over age 50 every 2 years. "Since its launch in 1992, the study has collected information about income, work, assets, pension plans, health insurance, disability, physical health and functioning, cognitive functioning, and health care expenditures."
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Innovative Data Sources for Regional Economic AnalysisThis open access book describes sources of data. Not all of the sources listed are free.
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International Macroeconomic Data Set - U.S. Dept of Agriculture Economic Research ServiceEsp. useful for projections, the USDA's International Macroeconomic Data Set "provides data from 1969 through 2030 for real (adjusted for inflation) gross domestic product (GDP), population, real exchange rates, and other variables for the 190 countries and 34 regions that are most important for U.S. agricultural trade."
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International Monetary Fund DataIMF time series data for many international economic indicators. Also, data on debt, direct investment, commodities, government finance, exports, exchange rates, etc.
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Kilts Center Marketing DatabasesOnly the Public Databases are availble to students. These include grocery store sales data, household purchasing data, scanner panel data, etc.
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MeasuringWorth.comDesigned by two Economics professors, this site offers calculators and data sets related to measures of worth over long time periods. Measures include annualized growth rates of CPI, GDP, and the price of gold; relative value of the U.S. dollar (or British pound) comparing to retail price index, GDP deflator, average earnings, per capita GDP, or GDP; and comparisons of purchasing power, inflation rate, and Dow Jones Industrial Average.
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Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS)"The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers, and employers across the United States. MEPS is the most complete source of data on the cost and use of health care and health insurance coverage."
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Michigan Traffic Crash Facts - Univ of MichiganThe MTCF Data Query Tool allows users to construct unique queries using Michigan crash data and view the results in a variety of formats.
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National Longitudinal Surveys (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)"The National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) are a set of surveys designed to gather information at multiple points in time on the labor market activities and other significant life events of several groups of men and women. For more than 3 decades, NLS data have served as an important tool for economists, sociologists, and other researchers."
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NBER DataThe National Bureau for Economic Research offers some data associated with NBER studies. Includes macro data, industry data, international trade data, individual data, demographic and vital statistics, patent data, and more.
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Our World in Data (OWID)Covers a wide range of topics across disciplines: Trends in health, food provision, the growth and distribution of incomes, violence, rights, wars, culture, energy use, education, and environmental changes are empirically analysed and visualized in this web publication. For each topic the quality of the data is discussed and, by pointing the visitor to the sources, this website is also a database of databases.
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Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)"The PSID is a nationally representative longitudinal study of nearly 8,000 U.S. families. Following the same families and individuals since 1968, the PSID collects data on economic, health, and social behavior."
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Penn World Table"PWT version 9.0 is a database with information on relative levels of income, output, input and productivity, covering 182 countries between 1950 and 2014." Provided through the Center for International Comparisons at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Pew Research Center For The People & The Press Data ArchiveRaw data from Pew surveys is posted here six months after the survey results are published. Includes archived data back to 1997.
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Social Progess IndexDownload the entire 2020 Social Progress Index data set—including ten years of historical data.
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Stanford Cable TV News AnalyzerThe Stanford Cable TV Analyzer enables you to write queries that compute the amount of time people appear and the amount of time words are heard in cable TV news. The dataset includes near 24-7 recordings of CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.
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Supreme Court Shadow Docket DatabaseInfo on every order the Court issued back to 1993.
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Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA)Monthly survey on topics related to remote working arrangements. Latest survey results are available in PDF on the site. To download data you may need to create a free account.
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Surveys of Consumers (University of Michigan)This site by UM's Institute for Social Research provides reports related to several survey projects including:
- Index of Current Conditions
- Consumer Expectations
- Index of Consumer Sentiment
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Tax Statistics (IRS)Includes Statistics of Income, business and individual tax statistics, charitable and exempt organization statistics, statistics by IRS form, and more. Tables are downloadable in Excel.
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UK DataserviceOffers large number of data series -- UK, Europe, and international focus.
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United Nations Statistics DivisionA number of U.N. statistical databases can be accessed for free on this site. Often data can be downloaded. Free sources include data from the Demographic Yearbook System, Joint Oil Data Inititiative, Millennium Indicators Database, National Accounts Main Aggregates Database (time series 1970- ), Social Indicators, population databases, and more. Note additional links to statistical information in the left margin.
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U.S. Billion-dollar Weather and Climate Disasters, 1980 - presentU.S. disaster cost assessments of the total, direct losses ($) inflicted by: tropical cyclones, inland floods, drought & heat waves, severe local storms (i.e., tornado, hail, straight-line wind damage), wildfires, crop freeze events and winter storms.
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Wolfram Data RepositoryThe Wolfram Data Repository is a public resource that hosts an expanding collection of computable datasets, curated and structured for immediate use in computation, visualization, and analysis.
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World Bank Data CatalogDevelopment data, climate change data, GDP data, World Bank finance data, and more.
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World Resources InstituteWorld Resources Institute (WRI) is a global research organization that spans more than 50 countries, with offices in Brazil, China, Europe, India, Indonesia, and the United States. Offers a wide range of statistical, graphical, and analytical information related to environmental, social and economic trends.
Data Collections Arranged by Statistical Technique
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Data and Story LibraryData stories with data sets that can be searched by specific statistical methods.
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Understandable Statistics Data SetsThe publisher of this textbook provides some data sets organized by data type/uses, such as:
*data for multiple linear regression
*single variable for large or samples
*paired data for t-tests
*data for one-way or two-way ANOVA
* time series data, etc. -
University of Florida Statistics Professor's Miscellaneous DatasetsProf Larry Winner, University of Florida Department of Statistics, provides links to a long list of data sets organized by statistical technique.
Tip: Since the list is so long, it can help to use Ctrl+F to search the page by keyword.