Lyman Beecher Brooks Library: Data &amp; Data Visualization: Finding Datasets

Learning to Deal With Data

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Datasets

Good research can fail if based on bad data. Bad data suffers from quality issues such as inaccuracy, incompleteness, inconsistencies, typos, and duplication.

Factors to Consider When Evaluating Data

Source

Who collected it?
Was it an individual or organization or agency?
The data source and the reporter or citer are not always the same. For example, advocacy organizations often publish data that were produced by some other organization. When feasible, it is best to go to the original source (or at least know and evaluate the source).
If the data are repackaged, is there proper documentation to lead you to the primary source? Would it be useful to get more information from the primary source? Could there be anything missing from the secondary version?

Authority

How widely known or cited is the producer? Who else uses these data?
Is the measure or producer contested?
What are the credentials of the data producer?
If an individual, are they an expert on the subject?
If an individual, what organizations are they associated with? Could that association affect the work?

Objectivity & Purpose

Who sponsored the production of these data?
What was the purpose of the collection/study?
Who was the intended audience for or users of the data?
Was it collected as part of the mission of an organization? Or for advocacy? Or for business purposes?

Currency

When were the data collected? Not always close to when they were released or published -- there is often a time lag between collection and reporting because of the time required to analyze the data.
Are these the newest figures? Sometimes the newest available figures are a few years old. That is okay, as long as you can verify that there isn't something newer.

Collection Methods & Completeness

How are the data collected? Count, measurement or estimation?
Even a reputable source and collection method can introduce bias. For example, crime data come from many sources, from victim reports to arrest records.
If a survey, what was the total population -- how does that compare to the size of the population it is supposed to represent?
If a survey, what methods used to select the population included, how was the total population sampled?
If a survey, what was the response rate?
What populations included? Excluded?

Consistency & Verification

Do other sources provide similar numbers?
Can the numbers be verified?

-From Data, Datasets, and Statistical Resources, Carlton College Gould Library, used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Avian Knowledge Network
Leveraging Data, Information, and Partnerships to Revolutionize Avian Conservation.
Catalogue of Life
The most complete authoritative list of the world's species.
Data Basin
Data Basin is a science-based mapping and analysis platform that supports learning, research, and sustainable environmental stewardship.
Data Dryad
Dryad is an open data publishing platform and a community committed to the open availability and routine re-use of all research data.
Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
Free and open access to biodiversity data.
Movebank
Movebank is a free, online database of animal tracking data hosted by the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. We help animal tracking researchers to manage, share, protect, analyze and archive their data.
National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)
Part of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, NCBI provides public access to biomedical and genomic information through its multiple databases and tools.
Zebrafish Information Network (ZFIN)
Expert curated zebrafish data: genetic, genomic and developmental. Data format depends on study, common formats are TSV, json, gff3

BIS Data Portal
BIS statistics, compiled in cooperation with central banks and other national authorities, are designed to inform the analysis of financial stability, international monetary spillovers and global liquidity. Data downloads are available in Excel and CSV formats.
Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
Data from the U.S. Department of Commerce on US production, consumption, investment, exports/imports, income and saving, industry input-output accounts, foreign direct investment and balance of payments, etc. Data available in PDF and Excel formats.
Business & Economy Datasets U.S. Census
These datasets may include statistics, graphs, maps, microdata, printed reports, and results in other forms. Datasets are usually for public use, with all personally identifiable information removed to ensure confidentiality. Users analyze, extract, customize and publish statistics. Data available in CSV format.
FRED Economic Data
816,000 economic data time series from 107 national, international, public, and private sources, along with tools for interaction, display, and dissemination from the Economic Research of the Federal Reserve Bank. Data available in the following formats: Excel & CSV (data) & Image, PowerPoint, PDF (graphs).
International Labour Organization (ILOSTAT)
Labor data for 200 countries, from 1969 to the present. Data is available for down in the following formats: csv, dta, sav, json, rds, sas7bdat
Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories, & Orders
Historical and current data from the U.S. Census Bureau from the Monthly Full Report on Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories, & Orders. Data available in Excel and PDF formats.

Mintel
Search and browse across thousands of market research intelligence materials including expert reports, consumer survey databooks, industry trends, news, and market observations.
Reports are published regularly across market sectors. They include comprehensive assessment of consumer surveys and link to the interactive databook that the report is based on.

Pew Research Center | Data
Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. We conduct public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. It makes its data available to the public for secondary analysis after a period of time.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
Contains data on International trade, Economic trends, Foreign direct investment, External financial resources, Commodity prices, Population and labor force, and Maritime transport.
The World Bank Commodity Markets
Historical and current data for over 70 series, from Bananas to Zinc.
World Inequality Database (WID)
The World Inequality Database aims to provide open and convenient access to the most extensive available database on the historical evolution of the world distribution of income and wealth, both within countries and between countries.

Higher Ed Data for Virginia
The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia maintains a large variety of data on state university.
Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)
IPEDS is a system of 12 interrelated survey components conducted annually that gathers data from every college, university, and technical and vocational institution that participates in the federal student financial aid programs. The data collections occur in fall, winter, and spring.
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) | Data Tools
Contains a wide variety of data on education and students in the United States.
National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) Series
NPSAS is a student- and former student-based source of data to provide information on how postsecondary student financial aid is targeted, received, and used. The survey focused on Guaranteed Student Loan (GSL) recipients.
NCSES Survey Data
National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics includes data on R&D activity and funding, colleges and universities, students and education, and the workforce.
United States Department of Education
Data collected by the U.S. Department of Education.
Urban Institute Education Data Explorer
The Education Data Explorer harmonizes data from all major federal datasets, including the US Department of Education Common Core of Data, the US Department of Education Civil Rights Data Collection, the US Department of Education EDFacts, the US Census Bureau Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates, the US Department of Education Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the US Department of Education College Scorecard, and the National Historical Geographic Information System. Allows you to search for a single school, school district, or college or to compare several schools, districts, or colleges across various data points.

Awesome Public Datasets
Open datasets from a wide variety of topics.
figshare
figshare is a repository where users can make all of their research outputs available in a citable, shareable and discoverable manner. Contains datasets from a variety of disciplines.
Harvard Dataverse
Harvard Dataverse is a repository for a wide variety of research data.
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR )
ICPSR maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction.
Kaggle
Explore, analyze, and share quality data.
Mendeley Data
Mendeley Data is a cloud-based communal repository where you can store your data, ensuring it is easy to share, access and cite.
Open Science Framework (OSF)
A site dedicated to sharing data and research.
Our World in Data
"The mission of Our World in Data is to make data and research on the world’s largest problems understandable and accessible." Broadly organized around the UN Global Sustainability goals, themes include health, food provision, the growth and distribution of incomes, violence, rights, wars, culture, energy use, education, and environmental changes.
Pew Research Center | Data
Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. We conduct public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. It makes its data available to the public for secondary analysis after a period of time.
QoG Data
From the QoG institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The compilation datasets are drawn from more than one hundred different sources that deal with topics related to the concepts of Quality of Government.
re3data
This site 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." (R3data) There is a search box for keyword searches, but you can also browse by subject, content type and country.
Registry of Open Data on AWS
This registry exists to help people discover and share datasets that are available via AWS resources.

Social Explorer
This database provides demographic data from U.S. sources including the Decennial Census, American Community Survey (ACS), County Business Patterns, Population Estimates, LEHD and more. Many of these data sets are available at detailed geographic levels, down to a few city blocks. It also includes World Development Indicators from the World Bank, European Statistics, the UK and Canadian Censuses from 2011, and religion data from Ireland (1911-2001).

United States Census Bureau
Access demographic and economic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Visual Geometry Group
Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford. A variety of visual datasets for machine learning.

Virginia specific data

Virginia Department of Health Data Portal

This data portal was developed to provide an access point for health-related data for Virginia. This portal is a comprehensive source for community health assessment, public, and population health data. Each data portal page provides interactive data at the most granular level available.
Virginia Cancer Dashboards

The Virginia Cancer Dashboards are a collection of individual dashboards providing cancer data by locality, health district, sex, race, and cancer site. The dashboards demonstrate the burden of cancer incidence and mortality in Virginia. They cover aggregate data for the years 2015 - 2019.
Virginia Epidemiology Reports

The Epidemiology Reports section includes reports from epidemiologists and data scientists at the Virginia Department of Health on important public health topics.
Heat-Related Illness Surveillance

This dashboard is updated on weekdays (Monday – Friday) in July and August, and weekly on Mondays in May, June, and September.

National data

Active Bacterial Core surveillance (ABCs)

Bact Facts Interactive allows you to view data from Active Bacterial Core surveillance (ABCs), a part of CDC’s Emerging Infections Program (EIP). ABCs is laboratory- and population-based surveillance that monitors invasive bacterial infections that cause bloodstream infections, sepsis, and meningitis in persons living in the community.
Agency for Health Care Research and Quality Data Tools

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ) mission is to produce evidence to make health care safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable, and affordable, and to work within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and with other partners to make sure that the evidence is understood and used.
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Data

Data and statistics topics, tools, and related organizations at CDC.
Healthcare-Associated Infections - Community Interface (HAIC)

The healthcare-associated infection component of CDC’s Emerging Infections Program (EIP) engages a network of state health departments and their academic medical center partners to help answer critical questions about emerging HAI threats, advanced infection tracking methods, and antibiotic resistance in the United States.
Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUPnet)

The data tool provides healthcare statistics and information for hospital inpatient and emergency department settings, as well as population-based healthcare data on counties. Generate tables and graphs on national and regional statistics and trends for community hospitals in the United States.
NCHHSTP AtlasPlus

National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHHSTP) AtlasPlus. an interactive tool that gives users the ability to create customized tables, maps, and charts using nearly 20 years of CDC’s surveillance data on HIV, viral hepatitis, STD, and TB. AtlasPlus also provides access to indicators on social determinants of health (SDOH) allowing users to view social and economic data in conjunction with surveillance data for each disease.

IPUMS Health Surveys
IPUMS Health Surveys: NHIS is a harmonized set of data covering more than 50 years (1963-present) of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). The NHIS is the principal source of information on the health of the U.S. population, covering such topics as general health status, the distribution of acute and chronic illness, functional limitations, access to and use of medical services, insurance coverage, and health behaviors (such as exercise, diet, and tobacco and alcohol consumption). On average, the survey covers 100,000 persons in 45,000 households each year. The IPUMS NHIS facilitates cross-time comparisons of these invaluable survey data by coding variables identically across time. With IPUMS NHIS microdata (information about individual persons and households), researchers can use their desired set of variables to create tabulations and multivariate analyses tailored to their particular questions.

International data

Global Burden of Disease (GBD)

Maintained by The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study provides a comprehensive picture of mortality and disability across countries, time, age, and sex. It quantifies health loss from hundreds of diseases, injuries, and risk factors, so that health systems can be improved and disparities eliminated.
Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx)

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) maintains this database of surveys, censuses, vital statistics, and other health-related data. It’s the place to start your health data search.
Health Nutrition and Population Statistics

Maintained by the World Bank, this data contains key health, nutrition and population statistics gathered from a variety of international sources.
UN Data

The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) maintain this data service for the global user community. There is a "nutrition and health" catagory.
World Health Organization (WHO) Data

WHO's World Health Data Hub is a comprehensive digital platform for global health data. It provides end-to-end solutions to collect, store, analyze, and share data that is timely, reliable, and actionable.

Many countries have open access portals for data from their governments.

*For websites in other languages, if you use the Chrome browser, it will offer you the option to translate the page to English.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
FAOSTAT is the world's most comprehensive statistical database on food, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, natural resources management and nutrition. The database provides a range of information on agrifood systems, including production; food security and nutrition; food balances; and food value chain.
International Social Survey Programme (ISSP)
The ISSP is a cross-national survey program conducting annual surveys in a broad group of countries. You can download full datasets or analyze online. You must create a free account to download data. Data is available in .dta, SPSS (.por & .sav) formats.
Our World in Data
"The mission of Our World in Data is to make data and research on the world’s largest problems understandable and accessible." Broadly organized around the UN Global Sustainability goals, themes include health, food provision, the growth and distribution of incomes, violence, rights, wars, culture, energy use, education, and environmental changes.
The World Bank Commodity Markets
Historical and current data for over 70 series, from Bananas to Zinc.

Bob Ross
Data from research based on images of Bob Ross’s paintings available in the Bob Ross Inc. store. Episodes were coded using 67 keywords describing content (trees, water, mountains, weather elements and man-made structures), stylistic choices in framing the paintings, and guest artists, for a total of 3,224 tags.
Heartbeat Sounds
This dataset was originally for a machine learning challenge to classify heart beat sounds. The data was gathered from two sources: (A) from the general public via the iStethoscope Pro iPhone app, and (B) from a clinic trial in hospitals using the digital stethoscope DigiScope.
Inside Airbnb
Quarterly data for the last year for each region is available for free download.
Meteoritical Bulletin Dataset
The primary function of this database is to provide authoritative information about meteorite names. The correct spelling, complete with punctuation and diacritical marks, of all known meteorites recognized by the Meteoritical Society may be found in this compilation. Official abbreviations for many meteorites are documented here as well. The database also contains status information for meteorites with provisional names, and listings for specimens of doubtful origin and pseudometeorites.
In addition, this database is a clearinghouse for basic information about each meteorite, including the classification, place and year of discovery, whether if was observed to fall, references to catalogues in which the meteorite is described, and known synonyms that may be encountered in the literature.
Titanic Passenger List
Includes: passenger id, if they survived, their gender, their passenger class, their name, age, how much their fare cost, which cabin they were in and where they embarked.
UFO Reports
National UFO Reporting Center data, geolocated and time standardized UFO reports for close to a century of data.
Urban Sound Datasets
Data from - J. Salamon, C. Jacoby and J. P. Bello, "A Dataset and Taxonomy for Urban Sound Research", 22nd ACM International Conference on Multimedia, Orlando USA, Nov. 2014

Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope Data
LAT and GBM data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
HEPData
Repository for publication-related High-Energy Physics data.
CERN Open Data
Explore more than three petabytes of open data from particle physics.
NASA HEASARC
The High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) is the primary archive for NASA's (and other space agencies') missions studying electromagnetic radiation from extremely energetic cosmic phenomena ranging from black holes to the Big Bang. Since its merger with the Legacy Archive for Microwave Background Data Analysis (LAMBDA) in 2008, the HEASARC archive contains data obtained by high-energy astronomy missions observing in the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV), X-ray, and gamma-ray bands, as well as data from space missions, balloons, and ground-based facilities that have studied the relic cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation in the sub-mm, mm and cm bands.
NIST | Atomic Spectra Database
The Atomic Spectra Database (ASD) Database maintained by the National Institute of Standards (NIST) contains data for radiative transitions and energy levels in atoms and atomic ions. Data are included for observed transitions and energy levels of most of the known chemical elements.

Data.gov
U.S. Government open data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more.
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) | Data Explorer
U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information funded data. Dataset format depends on project.
NASA Open Data Portal
NASA's clearinghouse site for open-data provided to the public.
NOAA | Data Discovery Portal
NOAA OneStop provides enhanced collection and granule searching for only those datasets archived at the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).
United States Census Bureau
Access demographic and economic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Public data repositories curated by the EPA.