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Resources by Type

This guide is designed to help students discover scholarly resources across a variety of formats.

Man at desk looking at computer monitors with graphs and charts of dataData & Statistics

 

 

This page is designed to help students discover and access data and statistics that they can utilize for research, projects, and other educational uses

The page gives an overview on data and statistics, including defining data, search tips, citation help, and where to access training for working with data. The subpage Data Collections (located in the left menu) provides links for finding and using data and statistics including a variety of county, state, national, and global resources.

Find data sets

Search Data Sets

This search box will bring up data sets available in OneSearch. Note that metadata describing datasets varies considerably in quality and OneSearch has limited sets. For specific topical datasets, please see our Data collections pages.

What Is data?

Data Basics

Data are the raw numbers and other materials that researchers use to create statistics. Data are often displayed in dashboards. 

Statistics are useful numbers and percentages that can help in supporting idea or an argument. Statistics are often displayed in tables.

Types of Data

Times Series Data: a study of the same variable measured over time. The study is the same, but the participants or subjects may be different.

Cross-Sectional Data: data that was only collected once (as opposed to time series data)

Longitudinal Data: describes a study conducted repeatedly, with the same group of participants or subjects.

Additional search tips

If you can't find the data that you're looking for on this page, try using these tips to search for more.

Open a browser of your choice:

  • Start by using locations to narrow your search, for example use "Country Name," "State Name," or "County Name" to find data that is more granular.
  • Use the term "Open Data" rather than "free data" to help ensure your results are more reliable. Open data is a term used by governments, agencies, and other organizations that want to make data more transparent.
  • Be sure to access sources that are produced by reputable organizations-- look for data that is produced by governments or national, state, or country agencies. 
  • Never download data from an insecure site. Be sure that sites feature a green or black lock symbol in front of the URL.

Software help

Nearly all data require software and technology tools to access and use. Use the tools on this page to get help with the software that you need to access, analyze, and interpret the data in this guide.

Linkedin Learning, accessed through myCI, offers free training for students, faculty, and staff. Use this resource to get help the latest versions of many popular software including SPSS, R, Stat and other many other statistical and data related tools.

Access tip: If you have trouble logging in to use this tool, be sure that you log out of your personal Linkedin Account before logging in with your myCI credentials. 

YouTube is more than just makeover tips and cat videos. It also has thousands of hours of tutorials and guides on software tools. Search the YouTube search box with terms like "SPSS Tutorial," "SPSS Tutorial + Histograms" and other combinations of terms to access the materials that you need. Be sure to make sure that the tutorial that you use is recent and matches the version of the software that you are using.