47-512 Applied Research Methods

Dr. Arcus ●  Spring 2003

Sources for Public Domain Data

 

Where can I find preliminary data?

 

• Disk that was distributed in class

 

• US Census 1990 summary tapes—all demographic and socioeconomic variables
• http://homer.ssd.census.gov/cdrom/lookup/
• click on  STF3A

Detailed geography - county, place, tract, etc.

• choose state and level of data (place = cities and towns, county, etc)
• select places of interest or  submit all
• select variables of interest
• download as tab delimited file
• Import to SPSS
• FileàRead Text Data
• Make sure to read technical documentation
• Info on data collection/imputation, variables, citation

 

• US Census Quick links
• http://quickfacts.census.gov/cgi-bin/state_QuickLinks?25000
• link to information about MA population by demographics, some for cities and towns, some for state as a whole.

 

• MISER
• http://www.umass.edu/miser/
• Massachusetts Institute for Social and Economic Research
• Population projections for cities and towns

 

• Massachusetts Department of Public Health
• http://www.state.ma.us/dph/pubstats.htm
• Data and reports on every aspect of public health
• Demographics, disease, violence, births, health indicators
• http://masschip.state.ma.us/
• MassCHIP home page
• Register as higher education--use UML affiliation and contact info

 

• INTER-UNIVERSITY CONSORTIUM FOR POLITICAL & SOCIAL RESEARCH
• http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/
• Links to GSS:  General Social Survey
• Vast archive of social science data
• Online data analysis tools
• Citing electronic data files

 

• ICSPR resources for data analysis and online texts
• http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/ORG/Other_Resources/SIMI/links.html

 

• General Social Survey resources developed at Queens College
• http://www.soc.qc.edu/QC_Software/GSS.html
• Capability of downloading to PC for data analysis
• Codebook information

 

• Annie E. Casey KidsCount online
• http://www.aecf.org/kidscount/kc2001/
• state by state child health and well being indicators

 

• National Center for Educational Statistics

• http://www.nccic.org/cctopics/stats.html

• links to data sets on education across country
  
  

• Massachusetts Department of Education
• http://www.doe.mass.edu/infoservices/reports/enroll/
• Enrollment information by district, grade, gender; age and disability
• http://www.doe.mass.edu/infoservices/reports/exclusions/9900/
• School exclusion reports; scroll down for .xls (Excel) data file
• http://www.doe.mass.edu/infoservices/reports/dropout/0001/
• Drop out reports and data (save as MS Excel files then open those .xls files in SPSS using open database)
  
  
• Social Science Data on the Net, UC San Diego
• http://odwin.ucsd.edu/idata/
• Includes links to 323 sites that have data ready to download
• Additional gateways and fee based sites
• Searchable