Research Guides: Social Sciences Research Methods: Data &amp; Visualization

Data in the Social Sciences

Social scientists use data to analyze and examine social conditions and ideas. This data can come from qualitative or quantitative research methods. Examples of social science data include survey data (opinion polls, voting records), nonsurvey data (images, maps, sound, video), raw measurements (numeric tables, government statistics), text (fieldnotes, transcripts, blogs, emails) and spatial data (zonal, event, spatial referent).

To learn more about how data is used in the social sciences, check out the Glossary of Social Science Terms and How to Cite Data properly.

Finding Data

ICPSR -Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research This link opens in a new window
ICPSR is the world's largest collection of digital social science data which can be used for secondary research, instructional activities, and to write articles, papers or theses - set up MyData account to begin. First-time users will be asked to create an ICPSR MyData account which must be done from an on-campus computer. Once the account is created, access is from anywhere. The account remains active for 6 months, after which time it must be reactivated from an on-campus computer.
Qualitative Data Repository (QDR) This link opens in a new window
Access qualitative and multi-method research datasets housed at Syracuse University. QDR allows researchers to store and preserve data and provides consultation through their Data Management Plans (DMP). Users will need to create an account in order to download data.
Data Citation Index This link opens in a new window
Discover research data, including data studies, data sets from a wide range of international data repositories and connect them with the scientific literature to track data citation. This is part of Web of Science.

Pew Research Data
Public opinion from 1997 to present.
Census.gov
Site for the U.S. Census Bureau.
Data.gov
Provides deep descriptions of the Federal datasets, info about how to access them, and tools to leverage government data
CDC Data & Statistics
Contains data from the U.S. Center for Disease Control

Data Visualization

World DataBank
DataBank is an analysis and visualization tool from the World Bank Group that contains collections of time series data on a variety of topics. You can create your own queries to generate tables, charts, and maps. Indicators include import and export statistics.
Information Is Beautiful
Site dedicated to illustrating multiple points of view through data visualization

A voronoi treemap of the mammals, based on the Tree of Life dataset. Licenses under CC BY 2.0

Tableau Public Software
Tableau Public is a free software that can allow you to connect to a spreadsheet or data file and create interactive data visualizations for the web.

sources cited

Thank you to Reed Garber-Pearson Integrated Social Sciences & Online Learning Librarian at the University of Washington Libraries who allowed me to copy parts of of their Integrated Social Sciences research guide for this page.