Research Guides: Statistics: Finding & Using Statistics: General Stats

Places to Start

data.census.gov
A source for population, economic, housing, and geographic information and data about the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Island areas. Includes information about income, education, insurance, employment, housing, poverty, veterans, and much more. Replaces American FactFinder

Census.gov This link opens in a new window
Website of the U.S. Census Bureau. Comprehensive data on the United States summarized and analyzed.
CIA World Factbook This link opens in a new window
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) supplies dozens of facts for each country including data on geography, people, government, economy, transportation, communication, and defense forces.

Data USA
Purpose is to understand and visualize critical issues facing the United States such as jobs, skills, and education. Data and data visualizations cover a large variety of industries and topics.

Passport This link opens in a new window
Euromonitor's online market research tool, formerly called GMID or Global Market Information Database, monitors economic trends and gives strategic analysis, market size, and market share for numerous products across key countries. Passport includes demographic, psychographic, economic and marketing reports, and statistics, which are comparable across countries. It provides country profiles that include economic news and emerging sectors, and integrated data sets that provide historical trends and forecasting numbers. Datasets may be downloaded to Excel.
International Historical Statistics This link opens in a new window
Find economic, financial, and social statistics for worldwide countries and territories, often spanning centuries and beginning as early as 1750. Find data for Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania including countries whose borders have changed.

OECD Factbook
Contains economic, environmental and social statistics for the OECD countries (mostly European) using over 100 different economic indicators.

Sage Data This link opens in a new window
Supplies statistical data series created from more than 400,000 government and non-government datasets viewable in tables, charts, maps, and graphs. Covers a wide range of business, societal and scientific topics including agriculture, arts, crime, employment and labor, defense, economy, education, energy, environment, geography, government finances, health, households and housing, immigration, politics, population, religion, social services, and transportation. Formerly known as Data Planet.

UNdata
Statistical information from member states on agriculture, crime, education, employment, energy, environment, health, HIV/AIDS, human development, industry, information and communication technology, national accounts, population, refugees, tourism, trade, as well as the Millennium Development Goals indicators.
UNICEF: Statistics and Monitoring
Economic and social statistics on the countries and territories of the world, with particular reference to children's well-being.

Finding Stats in Government Sources

Many government websites and publications include statistics; however, government websites can sometimes be frustrating to use and often it's easier to find statistics in government sources by using a search engine such as Google. Along with words to describe your topic, use these tricks to find statistics in government sources via Google:

Limit by URL Domain: site:gov

This limits your search to websites that end in "gov," which are typically U.S. (federal, state, and city) government websites.

Limit by Filetype: filetype:pdf

This limits your search to PDFs. Many government publications are in PDF format. Other filetypes such as .ppt (PowerPoints), .xls (Excel), and .doc (Word documents) work as well.

Add the word statistics to your search.

Example Searches

site:gov filetype:pdf education statistics
site:gov homeless Colorado statistics

Web Searches

Stat-Specific Web Browser

Number and Fact-Generating

Wolfram|Alpha
The goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. Enter a question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer.

Research Studies in the News

Journalist's Resource
Examines news topics through a research lens and provides a searchable database of academic and government research.