Research Guides: MATH 1300 : Resources

Key Web Resource

Developed at Wesleyan University, Passion-Driven Statistics is a data-driven, project-based introductory curriculum in statistics for everyone. It comes highly recommended from the MATH1300 instructor.

For Fun

Daily Infographic is an online repository of visualized data. A new graphic appears every weekday.

Tips for writing about data and statistics

Writing with Statistics - Purdue OWL
The Purdue Online Writing Lab offers some guidelines on how to incorporate statistical information into your writing effectively and accurately.
Statistics - from the Writing Center at UNC
A handout from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill about how to incorporate statistical evidence into your writing.

Learn more about federal statistics

The American Statistical Association created this page to inform people about how the federal statistical system generates data. There's a quiz!

https://www.amstat.org/policy-and-advocacy/count-on-stats

Key Databases

There are truly too many resources available to list them all here. This list contains just a handful of important selections. If you don't see a database applicable to your topic, please ask Holly for recommendations.

U.S. Census Bureau This link opens in a new window
The principal source of periodic demographic and socioeconomic data of the United States. Also includes data from the Business Surveys, and Economic, Manufacturers and Government censuses. Includes publications and links from historical censuses. Coverage: 1860-present.
Roper Center Archives for Public Opinion Research (iPoll) This link opens in a new window
Public opinion polling data from U.S. and international polling firms on a broad range of topics including opinions and behavior on social issues, politics, pop culture, international affairs. Download datasets and tables. Coverage: 1935 to present.
Statistical Abstract of the United States (1878-2012) This link opens in a new window
Annual Census Bureau comprehensive publication of summary statistics on social, political, and economic topics of the United States. Includes data from many federal government agencies. Coverage: 1878-2012.
Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
Map various demographic and socioeconomic variables from United States Census, Statistics Canada, UK Data Centre, and Eurostat. Download maps/data. Coverage: 1790-present.
Users must create and log into your personal account on Social Explorer.
PolicyMap This link opens in a new window
Visualize and map thousands of socioeconomic variables covering the United States (local to national). Create reports on specific Census geographies. Download reports, data, and maps. Coverage: 2000-present.
Health Nutrition and Population Statistics This link opens in a new window
Key health, nutrition, and population statistics from international sources. Data availablility differs by year for each variable. Coverage: 1960-present.
Bureau of Transportation Statistics This link opens in a new window
A leading source of statistics and documents on the United States transportation systems used for moving people and goods, and on their impacts on the economy, society and the environment.
Bureau of Labor Statistics This link opens in a new window
Statistical information at national, regional, and industry levels for labor market activity, price changes, and working conditions in the economy. Coverage 1970s-present.
Bureau of Justice Statistics This link opens in a new window
Statistical information regarding United States crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government.
Bureau of Economic Analysis This link opens in a new window
Economic statistics of national, regional, industry, and international accounts, including gross domestic product (GDP), personal income, corporate profits, and international transaction statistics. Coverage 1929-present.
CQ Researcher Online This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive reports about current issues and news in the United States. Coverage: 1991-present.
Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Contextual information and opinions on hundreds of today's hottest social issues.

Center for Disease Control & Prevention: Data & Statistics
Lots of information on various health related issues.
GapMinder
It uses its videos and data visualization tools to help people better understand statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels.
General Social Survey
Longitudinal studies of trends in American attitudes; contains a standard 'core' of demographic, behavioral, and attitudinal questions, plus topics of special interest related to the US population since 1972. From NORC (National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago).
Consumer Price Index (CPI)
Produces monthly data on changes in the prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of goods and services.
Current Population Survey
A joint project between the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Census Bureau (not included in American FactFinder). The CPS is a monthly survey that collects basic socio-demographic information and labor force characteristics. To access CPS data files, users can go through the Data Ferrett (see link below). Alternately, they can go to the National Bureau of Economic Research's CPS site or to the IPUMS CPS site.
Federal Reserve: Distribution of Household Wealth
This link will take you to interactive data on the distribution of household wealth in the U.S. since 1989. For more economic data from the Federal Reserve, check out the U.S. Government Information guide.
National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior
The National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB) is the largest nationally representative probability survey focused on understanding sex in the United States. Conducted by researchers at, or affiliated with, the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at the Indiana University School of Public Health, the NSSHB is an ongoing multi-wave study with data collected in 2009, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018. More than 20,000 people between the ages of 14 and 102 have participated in the NSSHB.

Research Guides & Data Sources

UNM Librarians frequently compile resources applicable to both broad and tailored research topics. Many guides have pages dedicated to resources just for data and statistics. This list links to several of these statistics-specific resource lists for various subject areas. For each guide, you can also reach out to the librarian who created guide (usually listed on the first page of the guide) for more assistance as needed.

Don't see a guide that looks useful for your topic? This is not a comprehensive list, and there's plenty more. Check the complete list of research guides to see if there's one that looks relevant to you.

Data Repositories

Data.Census.Gov This link opens in a new window
Access to the United States Census Bureau's population, housing, economic, and geographic data. Coverage: 2000-present.
Data.gov This link opens in a new window
United States open government resource including datasets produced by federal as well as contributing state and local organizations. In addition to raw data downloads, site provides analytical tools and an Application Programming Interface (API) for data access. Coverage: 2013-present.

re3data.org
re3data.org is a global registry of research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines. It presents repositories for the permanent storage and access of data sets to researchers, funding bodies, publishers and scholarly institutions.
Directory of Open Access Data Repositories
Part of the Open Access Directory, this is a list of repositories and databases for open data. Its spans many disciplines from Archaeology to Linguistics to Physics.

ICPSR (datasets) This link opens in a new window
The Inter-University Consortium for Political & Social Research (ICPSR) maintains a dataset archive of research in the social and behavioral sciences. It hosts 21 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.

UNM Datasets

UNM First-Year Cohort Tracking
The UNM Office of Institutional Analytics continually tracks the progress of first-time first-year students admitted to the UNM Main Campus in each fall semester. The data contained in the First-year Cohort Tracking (FCT) reports include high school information relevant to college admission, demographic statistics, UNM GPAs, and retention and graduation rates pertaining to these cohorts of students.
UNM Salary Book
Sunshine @ The University of New Mexico is UNM's version of a transparency portal that allows public online access to view UNM spending, budgets, revenues, employee salaries, purchase order information and more. On this website, you can find information about UNM employees' annual fiscal year salaries, July 1st through June 30th, associated with their primary position.
UNM Bureau of Business and Economic Research
BBER is the recognized expert in socioeconomic data for the state of New Mexico.
UNM Office of Institutional Analytics
OIA provides aggregated statistics on UNM students by degree, program, graduation, etc.