Library Research Guides: Thesis & Departmental Honors Students: Create, Find, and Use Data

Check out the separate research guide on how to locate and use data at Wellesley.

Major Data Sources

ICPSR: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research This link opens in a new window
Archive of research in the social and behavioral sciences, with collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, social media, and other fields. Includes a bibliography of publications related to data.

IPUMS
IPUMS provides census and survey data from around the world integrated across time and space. IPUMS integration and documentation makes it easy to study change, conduct comparative research, merge information across data types, and analyze individuals within family and community context.
National Center for Education Statistics Surveys
National Center for Health Statistics Surveys
Bureau of Justice Statistics Data Analysis Tools
Bureau of Labor Statistics Subject Area Categories
General Social Survey

Economics

National Bureau of Economic Research Data
Consumer Expenditure Survey
Penn World Tables
Data on about 30 variables for about 189 countries over some or all the years 1950-2010.

Education

Elections

Environment

UNEP Environmental Data Explorer
Provides 500+ variables from the United Nations Environment Programme.
Water Data
From the Pacific Institute; some tables available as .csv files

Finance

New York Stock Exchange Data Library
Tables can be copied and pasted into Excel.
Yahoo Finance
Use this to find historical stock prices. Search by ticker symbol.

Health

Housing

Income

Justice & Crime

Labor

Current Population Survey (CPS)
Joint project between the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau.
National Longitudinal Surveys
Labor market activities and other significant life events of several groups of men and women.

Military

Polling

Polling the Nations This link opens in a new window
Public opinion polls and surveys on current events around the world. Includes charts and survey questions.
Dates: 1986 CE to present
Roper iPoll This link opens in a new window
A full-text primary source archive of public opinion, surveys, and data. It covers a wide variety of topics, including politics, the economy, education, the environment, labor, race, religion, and more.
Dates: 1935 CE-present.

Religion

Social

CPANDA: Cultural Policy & the Arts National Data Archive
Data dealing with public policy and the arts.
European Social Survey
Interaction between Europe's changing institutions and the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of its diverse populations. Register to download data.
General Social Survey
International Social Survey Program
World Values Survey
World's most comprehensive investigation of political and sociocultural change.

Women

WomanStats Project
Qualitative and quantitative information on over 300 indicators of women's status in 174 countries. First time users must register. Use the codebook to define the variable.