Finding Data & Statistics

First:

Start by defining your topic!

What or who do you what to analysis.

• People ( female, males, economic classes, age ..)
• Objects or things: (television watching, arrests or education scores..)
• Organizations ( Universities, Libraries or High school ..)

What is the time period of the data:

• Historical data
• Current data
• Longitude date: data collected over a long period of time

Where is the data collected:

• Households, schools, neighborhood, countries, states or random selected populations.

Who creates Data:

• The Federal government agencies and non- government organizations collect data .
  • Examples: US population, Immigration rates, birth rates, household income, graduation rates.
  • Examples: United Nations data on poverty rates.
• Corporations collect data that can used to improve products and services.
  • pollsters, 
• Universities Research perform research on a variety of topics ."The research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humans, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications."
  • Examples: cancer research, scientific lab research on technology and science.
  • Data on group behavior
  • Observations of animal behavior

Learn more about getting started:

Finding Statistics (Michigan State) - excellent overview outlining strategies for locating datasets and statistical facts.

You can find data and statistics:

• Library Database.  Search a list of University of Akron databases, under the database link
• Google Search for government agencies, non-profit organization and world organization
  • Tips for searching Google include:
        •    Try using Google Advanced Search
        •    Include search terms like data or table  or statistics
        •    Search for a particular document type (e.g. childhood obesity filetype:xls)
        •    Search for data on a particular site or domain (e.g. childhood obesity site:.gov)   
• Use Google Product
  • Google Public Data Explorer
    Access public data and statistics.
• Data Repositories (Open Access Directory)
• re3data.org: Registry of Research Data Repositories
  re3data.org is a global registry of research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines.