Sociological

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AgeSource/AgeStats Worldwide (AARP International)

AARP International has created a pair of annotated databases, AgeSource and AgeStats, to identify and link to aging-related information online. AgeSource covers "clearinghouses, databases, libraries, directories, bibliographies and reading lists, texts and reports, national statistical resources, training materials, and Web 'metasites' focused on aging or closely allied subjects." AgeStats focuses on statistics comparing the situation of older adults between countries and regions. Users can keyword-search the annotations and also limit the search by type of resource (e.g. statistical resource) and geographic area.

The AARP International site also features "country profiles" and a "comparative data search" tool that can be found under the "Aging Everywhere" menu option. A "country profile" consists of a table of quick aging-related stats such as life expectancy, statutory retirement age, and total health care expenditures per capita. The comparative data search tool allows the user to select regions or countries and variables. The most current numbers are shown in each case.

Aging Statistics (U.S. Administration on Aging)

The "Aging Statistics" section of the U.S. Administration on Aging site links to the following databases and reports:

• Profile of Older Americans
• AGing Integrated Database (AGID)
• Census Data & Population Estimates
• Projected Future Growth of Older Population
• Minority Aging
• Key Indicators of Well-Being

American Mosaic Project (Doug Hartmann and Penny Edgell)
The American Mosaic Project is a multi-year, multi-method study of the bases of solidarity and diversity in American life. The principal investigators of this project are Doug Hartmann, Penny Edgell and Joseph Gerteis at the University of Minnesota, and the project is funded by the Edelstein Family Foundation of Minneapolis, MN.

The survey was designed to gather data on diversity with a particular emphasis on race and religion. A nationally-representative telephone survey was conducted during the summer of 2003; additional in-depth interviews and fieldwork across the country, explored the various contexts in which Americans experience diversity, focusing on religious interfaith organizations, neighborhoods, and festivals. Key findings on Discrimination, Atheism, Anti-Semitism, Racial attitudes of Conservative Christians, Diversity, Racial Attitudes and Religion, and Racial Privilege are available as press releases at this site.

American Time Use Survey (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau)
In September 2004, the first data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) was released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is the first federal, nationwide study of time use in the United States, with data collection beginning in 2003. The web site carries data tables in ASCII format, with accompanying documentation. A microdata release is planned in the future, and time-series will become available as the survey continues across multiple years.

Asia Regional Information Center (ARIC) (Office of Regional Economic Integration (OREI))
Formerly the Asia Recovery Information Center, ARIC was reinvented in 2006 as the Asia Regional Information Center, with a focus on regional cooperation and integration in Asia and the Pacific. The site features the Integration Indicators Database, a set of indicators going back as far as 1990 in areas of trade, foreign direct investment, and finance, focusing on 47 "reporting countries" across Asia and the Pacific.

Center for Demography and Ecology (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Many excellent CDE Working Papers are available online.

Connecticut Economic Information System (Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development)
The CEIS is a collection of demographic and economic information about the state of Connecticut. Topics include employment and labor force, census data, exports, profiles of towns and other areas, and other economic indicators. Files are available in Excel and HTML.

Crime and Justice Data Online (Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice)
Crime and Justice Data Online contains a number of studies directly related to crime statistics in the United States. Included are Crime Trends from the FBI's Uniform Crime reports, homicide trends by state and by city as well as law enforcement and administrative statistics. Users can select variables online and receive data as HTML tables or .csv files.

Cultural Policy and the Arts National Data Archive (CPANDA) (Princeton University)
CPANDA is a digital archive of arts and cultural data that includes the following datasets (with more to follow):

• Brooklyn Museum Art Controversy Survey 1999
• Classical Music Consumer Segmentation Study 2001
• General Social Survey 1993: Culture Module
• General Social Survey 1998: Culture Module
• Information on Artists 1989
• Museum Program Survey 1979
• National and Local Profiles of Cultural Support 1998-2001
• Performing Arts Research Coalition 2002
• State of the First Amendment [1997 - 2002]
• Survey of Public Participation in the Arts [1982 - 1997]

Data from Developing Countries (BREAD (Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development))
This page is intended to help locate datasets pertaining to data from developing countries that is either in the public domain or that can be obtained at modest cost from the agency collecting the data. This site provides links to some of the data available online and explanations of how to obtain others. Links are grouped into household surveys, firm-level data, macro data sources, and national statistical offices.

Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) (U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID))

The MEASURE DHS program facilitiates the Demographic and Health Survey, the Service Provision Assessment (SPA) Survey, and the HIV/AIDS Indicator Survey (AIS). The resulting datasets, which focus on Central and South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, are available for direct downloading. Datasets include information on family planning, maternal and child health, child survival, AIDS, educational attainment, and household composition and characteristics. Online data tools include:

• the STATcompiler tool for quick facts and country comparisons, allowing users to build customized tables from DHS surveys and indicators.
• the HIV/AIDS Survey Indicators Database, for creating HIV/AIDS data tables from a variety of sources.
• the STATmapper tool for creating maps from DHS data in more than 75 countries.

Documentation and SPSS/PC and SAS data dictionaries are also available. Users must register and receive a password to download datasets.

Economic and Social Database: Latin America and the Caribbean (U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID))
These pages provide a regional economic overview and a database query by sector (poverty, health, education, environment and more). Database results can be returned in HTML or as an Excel spreadsheet.

E-STAT (Statistics Canada)
E-STAT is Statistics Canada's interactive learning tool for the education community. E-STAT offers an enormous warehouse of reliable and timely statistics about Canada and its ever-changing people, including summary census data down to the tract level and an annually-updated version of the CANSIM socioeconomic database. It contains data on economy, land and resources, people, government, justice and social conditions. E-STAT is available to registered educational institutions only, including UW-Madison.

European Data Center for Work and Welfare (EDACwowe) (University of Tilburg and Danish National Centre for Social Research)
The European Data Center for Work and Welfare (EDACwowe) is a searchable collection of annotated links to websites containing data for European research and policy-making in the areas of work and welfare. The central topics covered by the site are income and benefits, social care, and work and employment. However, the links also touch on related fields such as demographics, education, taxes, health, migration, politics and elections, and quality of life. EDACwowe organizes its site, via a left-hand menubar, around the categories of Comparative Data, National Data, and International Repositories. The Comparative Data category is the most detailed, with subheadings for opinion surveys, socio-economic surveys, indicators and statistics, and policies and institutions. Each survey in the Comparative Data category gets a multi-part description on the EDACwowe site, from survey type to participating countries to topics to availability and searchability of questionnaires and data. The National Data category, by contrast, gives only links and archive names, and the International Repositories category gives a short descriptive paragraph for each link.

European Social Survey (ESS) (European Commission and European Science Foundation)
The European Social Survey (ESS) is a new survey encompassing 19 European nations and focusing on public attitudes and values related to the ongoing change in social institutions. An initial round of data collection was completed in 2001, using a core questionnaire and two rotating modules. The microdata was released in August 2003 via the NESSTAR system at http://ess.nsd.uib.no/nesstarlight/index.jsp. Funding for a second round of data collection has also been obtained, with data release scheduled for 2005.

FlowingData (Nathan Vau)

Since mid-2007 Nathan Vau, a PhD candidate in Statistics at UCLA, has been running the FlowingData blog. His interest is in data visualization, and his blog has attracted other like-minded data enthusiasts, who interact in a fascinating conversation, with lots of thought-provoking images and animations, on how data can be presented.

One useful category of post holds up data graphics from the media for critique by the FlowingData community. Another category presents visualizations created by the blog author himself, with animations on such topics as mapping the expansion of WalMart in the United States over time, and mapping the use of the word “inauguration” on Twitter messages worldwide in the hours surrounding the events of January 20, 2009 in Washington DC. FlowingData also holds contests for its readers to contribute visualizations based on a given dataset, while a forum page adds opportunities for reader input.

General Social Survey Data and Information Retrieval System (GSSDIRS) (Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR))
The GSSDIRS site allows users to search all GSS documents, browse the GSS Codebooks (1972-2000), perform online subsetting, and generate cross-tabs from the GSS. The codebook includes frequencies of response over time and have links to the annotated bibliography of studies that have analyzed each variable. The online subsetting form allows you to limit cases by year or any other variable, then name the variables you wish to be extracted, into a plain ASCII, or SAS or SPSS transport file. When typing in variable names, make sure there is a blank space after each word (even when you hit return for the next line) and that the lines do not exceed 77 characters in length.

German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW))
The GSOEP is a longitudinal study of private households across Germany, ongoing since 1984. Some of the many topics include household composition, occupational biographies, employment, earnings, health and satisfaction indicators. The GSOEP web site carries information about the study, including the questionnaires and a web interface to the data (SOEPinfo) that allows for frequency queries and item correspondence. Also available is contact information for obtaining the data directly from GSOEP. [NOTE: DISC has 1984-2002 available on CD-ROM in the library, Study #CA-511-001; more current data releases are available for purchase from GSOEP.]

Global Urban Observatory Databases (United Nations Human Settlement Programme)
The Global Urban Observatory (GUO) program is aimed at developing and applying policy-oriented urban indicators & statistics on an international basis. This site from the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-HABITAT) has combined its former database offerings into a single interface called UrbanInfo, which focuses on indicators in demography, economy, education, governance, health, housing, nutrition, and women.

Green Book (Ways and Means Committee, U.S. House of Representatives)
Entitlement programs within the jurisdiction of the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives and other related materials. Published every two years, the Green Book is over 1000 pages long in paper form and contains many tables of longitudinal data on poverty, income, program participation, and taxation in a variety of public policy areas including social security, Medicaid and Medicare, welfare, child care, unemployment insurance, immigration, etc. The Green Book is available through the GPO Access web site, from the 1996 edition to the present, with a search function by year. The 1994 edition (no search capability) is available on the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services web site.

Henry A. Murray Research Center Archive (Radcliffe College)
The Henry A. Murray Research Center promotes the use of existing social science data to explore human development in the context of social change. The Murray Center data archive is unique in that it holds many longitudinal studies, and that it includes not only quantitative data, but also qualitative materials such as case histories, open-ended interviews, and audio and video tapes. An online "application for data use" can be found under Policies.

Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) (University of Wisconsin-Madison, Institute for Research on Poverty)
IRP is a national, university-based center for research into the causes and consequences of poverty and social inequity in the United States. One of the site's highlights is their excellent compilation of Poverty-Related Links. Also among the many offerings is the Child Support Demonstration Evaluation (CSDE), which looks at both direct effects of the child support pass-through policy on child support paid and received, and a wide range of potential secondary effects. To access the public-use data, users must apply and be approved for access to the data. After payment of a fee, users are provided with instructions on how and where to submit SAS programs. CSDE data can only be accessed by submitting SAS computer programs; actual copies of the data files are not provided.

Joint Center for Poverty Research (JCPR) (Northwestern University and University of Chicago)
JCPR supports academic research that examines what it means to be poor and live in America, concentrating on the causes and consequences of poverty in America and the effectiveness of policies aimed at reducing poverty. The JCPR site includes information on publications, conferences, various resources, programs, and research events.

KIDS COUNT (Annie E. Casey Foundation)
KIDS COUNT is a national and state-by-state effort to track the status of children in the U.S., by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The site now has three interactive online databases: KIDS COUNT State-Level Data Online; KIDS COUNT Census Data Online; and CLIKS: County-City-Community Level Information on Kids. All three databases let the user create profiles and rankings, plus download raw data (either text or Excel, depending on the database). Some of the databases also can produce line-graphs or maps online.

Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) of the World Bank (World Bank)
Household surveys are available for numerous countries, depending on each country's policy concerning release of data for public use. Survey documentation without data may be downloaded for the following countries: Albania, Armenia, Ecuador, Ghana, Guyana, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Malawi, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Romania, Russia, Viet Nam (Vietnam). The following datasets are available for free download from the web site (as of 7/09):

• Albania 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005
• Azerbaijan 1995
• Bosnia & Herzogovina 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004
• Brazil 1996-97
• Bulgaria 1995, 1997, 2001, 2003
• China - Heibei and Liaoning 1995 & 1997
• Cote d'Ivoire 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988
• Guatemala 2000
• India - Uttar Pradesh and Bihar 1997-98
• Kyrgyz Republic 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998
• Nicaragua 1993, 1998-99, 2001
• Panama Living Standards Survey, 1997, 2003
• Papua New Guinea Household Survey: 1996
• Peru Living Standards Survey (Encuesta de Hogares Sobre Medicion de Niveles de Vida): 1990, 1991 and 1994.
• Serbia 2002, 2003, 2007
• South Africa Integrated Household Survey (1993-94).
• Tajikistan, 1999, 2003, 2007
• Tanzania - Kagera, 1991-94, 2004
• Tanzania - National, 1993
• Timor Leste - 2001
• Yugoslavia - Kosovo, 2000

Maryland State Data Center (Maryland State Data Center)
Although each state has Data Centers in collaboration with the U.S. Census Bureau, Maryland's online offerings are more extensive than most. The site focuses on census information and socioeconomic projects for the state of Maryland.

MIDMAC - Midlife Research (MacArthur Foundation)
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development (MIDMAC) was established in 1989 to explore different aspects of the middle age life-span from a variety of different perspectives, including psychology, sociology, anthropology, and health care. The site contains information about the research studies; actual data is archived with ICPSR (search on MIDMAC or MIDUS).

Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS) (Centre for Time Use Research, University of Oxford)
The Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS) comprises over 50 time-use studies from 19 countries, some as far back as the 1960s. The studies included in MTUS have been recoded to harmonize the variables, allowing analysis that crosses boundaries of countries and years. The MTUS archive contains files from the original surveys as well as the harmonized and aggregate files. While there is no cost to use MTUS data, registration is required for each researcher planning to use the data, and some of the data is subject to additional restrictions.

National Gambling Impact Study Commission (National Gambling Impact Study Commission)
The NGISC was created by Congress in 1996 and charged "to conduct a comprehensive legal and factual study of the social and economic impacts of gambling on federal, state, local, and Native American tribal governments; and on communities and social institutions." This site contains the Commission's 1999 report and a link to the FTP site for NORC's Gambling Impact and Behavior Study dataset.

National Longitudinal Surveys (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
The National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) are a set of surveys designed to gather information at multiple points in time on the labor market activities and other significant life events of several groups of men and women. Data and documentation can either be downloaded for free or ordered on CD-ROM (click on "Order NLS Data" to do either). There is also a utility for selecting and extracting up to 250 variables from the first three years of interviews of the NLSY97; the results are sent via e-mail.

National Marriage Project (David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead)
The National Marriage Project is located at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. It is a national clearinghouse for research and information on marriage. Reports on the status of marriage are issued regularly by the project. An annual compendium of statistics and other information on marriage called The State of Our Unions is available from this web site. Periodically their researchers also conduct surveys and fieldworks with a focus on younger non-college men and women, and review and critique marriage and family-life education programs in the schools. It is a useful source to locate citations to datasets used in research on marriage and relationships.

National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) (Urban Institute)
The National Survey of America's Families represents the noninstitutionalized, civilian population of persons under age 65 in the nation as a whole and in 13 states in particular: Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. The survey provides quantitative measures of the quality of life in America, paying particular attention to low-income families. Data is available for download from the site (free registration required), along with an online statistical analysis tool based on the Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA) software.

NEMDA - Key Data on Ethnic Minorities in Great Britain (National Ethnic Minority Data Archive)
Sponsored by The National Ethnic Minority Data Archive project (NEMDA), this site contains data about ethnic minorities in Great Britain, primarily from the 1991 census. There is no raw data, but the site provides summary charts in HTML and PDF reports.

New Beneficiary Data System (U.S. Social Security Administration)
The Social Security Administration's NBDS contains extensive information on the changing circumstances of aged and disabled beneficiaries. Based initially on a national cross-sectional survey of new beneficiaries in 1982, the original database has been expanded with information from administrative records and a second round of interviews in 1991. Variables measured in the original New Beneficiary Survey (NBS) include demographic characteristics; employment, marital and childbearing histories; household composition; health; income and assets; program knowledge; and information about the spouses of married respondents. Public use data and documentation may be downloaded from the site.

NLS Web-Investigator (Center for Human Resource Research (CHRR), Ohio State University)
The NLS Web-Investigator is a web-based interface to documentation and data from all the cohorts of the National Longitudinal Study (NLS). Like its predecessor, CHRR DB-Investigator, Web-Investigator allows users to search the database by variable name, question text, survey year and question number. Users can view the codebook information associated with variables, select and extract variables, and create a codebook unique to the variables chosen. Web-Investigator provides value labels in the statistical results files. A weighting program option lets users create a custom set of survey weights, making it easier to accurately calculate summary statistics from multiple years of data. Registered users can perform variable extractions without downloading any software or full data files, and can update and save their tag sets on the server for up to 90 days. Result files can be saved to a local computer or left in a personal NLS Web-Investigator account for up to 4 days.

OECD Factbook (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD))

The OECD Factbook is the organization's best-selling title, an annual global overview focusing on economic, social and environmental indicators for OECD member countries and several additional partners (Brazil, Russian Federation, India, Indonesia, China, South Africa, Chile, Estonia, Israel and Slovenia.) Each year a special topic is chosen for a supplemental chapter; in 2009 the special topic is inequality.

The Factbook is available through the UW-Madison SourceOECD subscription, but also in various formats for non-subscribers, including PDF with Excel graphs. OECD Factbook also provides Trendalyzer dynamic visualisation software to help users identify long-term trends and comparisons between countries, and the Flash-based OECD Factbook eXplorer which combines maps and graphs with stories to let users examine time developments and interrelations between indicators.

Países@ (Countries@) (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE))

The Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) has announced a new map-based data extractor called Países@ (“Países” translates to “Countries”). This Flash-based ready reference tool contains basic population, social indicator, economic, technological, land use, and United Nations Millenium Development Goals information for each of the 192 United Nations members for the latest year available.

To use the extractor, select a country from the World Map on the Países@ main page. Basic information about the country will appear (in Portuguese, the only currently-available language for Países@). Select a category of indicators for that country, then click the globe icon next to an individual indicator to get a sortable listing for that indicator for all countries in the database. Additional information for each country includes a political map, a short slide show featuring photographic highlights of the country, and a link to a Google satellite map.

Note: for geographically-small countries, users may have to use the magnifying glass icon (+) several times, in conjunction with the arrow keys, until the country becomes large enough to click on.

Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) (National Science Foundation and National Institute on Aging and others)
The PSID is a longitudinal survey of a representative sample of US individuals and their families, ongoing since 1968. The data were collected each year through 1997, and every other year starting in 1999. Topics include income and wealth, expenses, education, and health care. A section on philanthropic giving and volunteering was added in 2001. A subsetting utility is available on the site, or data files may be downloaded in their entirety.

Poverty Guidelines, Research and Measurement (Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services and Human Services))
This site includes the annual report on HHS Poverty Guidelines, as well as information contacts and references on the Poverty Guidelines, the Poverty Thresholds, and the Development and History of the U.S. Poverty Lines. The site also includes several PDF format articles on poverty measurement.

Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and Harvard School of Public Health; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

According to the web site at ICPSR, “The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) is a large-scale, interdisciplinary study of how families, schools, and neighborhoods affect child and adolescent development. It was designed to advance the understanding of the developmental pathways of both positive and negative human social behaviors.” Three types of quantitative data are available as of December 2005:

1. Systematic Social Observation data, collected in 1995 by videotaping sampled city blocks and coding characteristics.
2. A Longitudinal Cohort Study collected three waves of data (1994-1997, 1997-1999, and 2000-2001) from a sample of children, adolescents, young adults, and their primary caregivers.
3. An Infant Assessment unit of the Longitudinal Cohort Study.

Data from Community Surveys, conducted in 1994-95, will be forthcoming, as will qualitative data collected from the videorecordings in the Systematic Social Observation and Infant Assessment units.

Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
The RMLS looks at the social and economic effects of the Russian Republic's economic reforms in the 1990s. Household data has been collected 13 times since 1992; the survey was designed to capture overall economic and health well-being. Though the data was previously available free of charge, the funding structure changed in 2006 and now only the rounds which received funding from the National Institutes of Health are available without charge. The site outlines the various requirements for receiving the different categories and rounds of data; all require online registration, and some require various combinations of payment, a data use agreement, IRB approval, and an explicit confidentiality plan.

Scientific Research on the Internet (University of Maryland, Department of Sociology)
This site offers a variety of social science data related to the impact of the Internet on society. Studies include the PEW Biennial Media Consumption Survey from 1998 and 2000, The Internet and American Life: Daily Tracking Survey and many others. Studies can be viewed using SDA interface format.

Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) (U.S. Bureau of the Census)

From the SAIPE site: "The U.S. Census Bureau, with support from other Federal agencies, created the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) program to provide more current estimates of selected income and poverty statistics than those from the most recent decennial census. Estimates are created for states, counties, and school districts. The main objective of this program is to provide updated estimates of income and poverty statistics for the administration of federal programs and the allocation of federal funds to local jurisdictions. Beginning with the estimates for 2005, data from the American Community Survey are used in the estimation procedure; all prior year estimates used data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplements of the Current Population Survey."

Files are released annually. State and county files cover the years 1989, 1993, and 1995 onward. School district files cover 1995, 1997, and 1999 onward. Files are downloadable in .xls and .txt format. Users can also use drop-down menus to display data in HTML tables.

Social Indicators of Development (SID) (World Bank and CIESIN)
SID, hosted by CIESIN, contains the World Bank's most detailed data collection for assessing human welfare to provide a picture of the social effects of economic development. Data are presented for over 170 economies, omitting only those for which data are inadequate. Data are through 1993.

Social Research Update (University of Surrey, United Kingdom)
This general reference periodical for beginning social science researchers is issued quarterly by the Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, England. Previous issues have included such topics as Ethnographic writing, Archiving qualitative research data, and Secondary analysis of qualitative data.

Sociometrics Corporation (Sociometrics Corp)
The Sociometrics Corporation is a commercial entity that provides data & documentation in six major areas: sexuality, health & adolescence; family; social research on aging; drug abuse; AIDS/STD; and disability. Studies can be searched or browsed; The datasets may be ordered for a fee, or may be available through other DISC subscriptions.

SocioSite (University of Amsterdam)
SocioSite covers a startlingly broad array of sociological resources on the Internet, and is being diligently maintained. The focus is from the Dutch viewpoint but the universe is world-wide. A detailed list of subject areas serves as a jumping-off point, including a section on social science data archives.

State and Metropolitan Area Data Book (U.S. Bureau of the Census)
An old standby source from the U.S. Census Bureau has received its first update since the 1997/98 edition: the State & Metropolitan Area Data Book, 2006. This data compendium provides a useful complement to the annual Statistical Abstract of the United States by breaking out the numbers by states and metropolitan statistical areas. The data, presented in Excel files and PDF, covers topical areas from agriculture to veterans. Sources include various federal statistical bureaus and other government agencies, foundations and associations, and private research organizations. The files can be downloaded from the site in Excel and PDF; an electronic copy and printout is also available in the DISC library.

State Health Facts Online (Kaiser Family Foundation)
The State Health Facts site "is designed to provide free, up-to-date, and easy-to-use health data on all 50 states." Coverage falls into twelve subject areas:

• Demographics and the economy
• Health status
• Health coverage and uninsured
• Medicaid and SCHIP
• Health costs and budgets
• Medicare
• Managed care and health insurance
• Providers and service use
• Minority health
• Women's health
• HIV/AIDS
• Children's health

Statistical Accounts of Scotland (EDINA)
In celebration of its 5th anniversary, the EDINA National Datacentre has made available the Statistical Accounts of Scotland dataset. These data, collected by parish ministers in the 1790s and the 1830s, provide a rich record of topics such as: wealth, class and poverty; climate, agriculture, fishing and wildlife; population, schools, and the moral health of the people. A free login is required.

Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
SIPP is a nationwide longitudinal survey for the U.S. that collects information on topics such as poverty, income, employment, and health insurance coverage. SIPP core content covers demographic characteristics, work experience, earnings, program participation, transfer income, and asset income; additional topical modules are also included with each wave. Data access for SIPP starting with 1996 through 2001 is available through DataFerret. Accompanying SAS, SPSS, Stata setup files and SIPP data files starting with 1984 are available from this NBER site.

Survey Research Data Archive-Academic Sinica (Taiwan) (Academic Sinica)
The Survey Research Data Archive stores and disseminates various surveys related to Taiwan for mainly academic purposes. Studies are included on a variety of issues relating to sociological trends in Taiwan. There is a cost for acquiring studies. Site is available in Chinese and English.

Swiss Foundation for Research in Social Sciences (FORS) (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)
The Swiss Foundation for Research in Social Sciences (FORS) is an organization of the Swiss government hosted at the University of Lausanne, providing services, conducting research, and publishing and disseminating research findings in the social sciences. Surveys that are currently under the aegis of FORS include the Swiss Household Panel, the Swiss Electoral Studies Selects and the Social Report. The former Swiss Information Service and Data Archive for the Social Sciences (SIDOS) is now under FORS management as well. The Data Services section of the site includes a traditional online data catalog as well as a Nesstar server that offers access to online analysis and downloading of datasets (free registration required). The site is available in English, German and French.

The Quantitative Study of Dreams (University of California, Santa Cruz)
This site provides tools and methodology for a quantitative content analysis method of dream research. Also included are links to study reports.

TransMONEE: Database of Socio-Economic Indicators for CEE/CIS Countries (United Nations Children's Fund and Innocenti Research Center)
TransMONEE contains over 150 economic and social indicators divided into ten different topics (population, natality, child and maternal mortality, life expectancy and adult mortality, family formation, health, education, child protection, crime indicators, and economic indicators) for 27 transition countries in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Annual time series data is available as far back as 1989. The TransMONEE data and country profiles are both available in Excel format.

Trends in UK Statistics Since 1900 (House of Commons Library)
This PDF report, illustrated with graphs and tables, summarizes selected social and economic trends in the UK since 1990, including: population, health, education, defense, crime, transport, energy, and leisure, among others. The document is part of a research report collection presented by the UK House of Commons Library. Various reports are available for 1998-2000.

U.N. Social Indicators (United Nations Statistics Division)
Most-recently-collected year's worth of basic figures for many countries, in HTML tables, in these categories: population, child-bearing, youth and elderly populations, education, human settlements, literacy, water supply and sanitation, income and economic activity, housing, and unemployment.

U.S. Demography (CIESIN)
Included here are informative explanations of the following datasets: Public Use Microdata Samples, Current Population Survey, Economic Census Data, County Business Patterns, County City Data Book, Statistical Abstract Supplement, National Economic Social and Environmental Databank, Regional Economic Information System, Enhanced County to County Migration 1985-1990, TIGER 1992 Boundaries, and STF3A Standard Extracts.

Understanding Social Statistics (Jane Fielding and Nigel Gilbert)
A companion website to the 2000 book of the same title by Jane Fielding and Nigel Gilbert. The site offers downloadable data sets, including the 1991 and 1995 General Household Survey . It also includes subsets of the World Bank’s Socioeconomic Indicators of Development, plus exercises to learn how to read and use data. Examples of statistical tables and a glossary are also included on the site.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (United Nations Development Programme)
This site has information on focus areas, the UN system, news, publications, and statistics on the Human Development Report and the Development Cooperation Analysis System.

Uruguay, Banco de Datos (Universidad de la República)
The Data Bank of the Sociodemographic and Political Information Unit (UISDP) is a source of qualitative and quantitative information about Urugayan research in Political Science, Sociology, Social Work, Population, and International Relations areas. Sources for datasets are the faculty at the Universidad de la Republica and in Uruguayan private centers of research. The web page provides access to more than a hundred data banks at Latin American and world-wide statistical institutions. Most of the web site is in Spanish.

Vietnam Demography and Society Research Projects (Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of Washington and Institute of Sociology, Hanoi - Vietnam)
The Vietnam Demography and Society Research Projects comprise two component projects: the Vietnam Life History Survey 1991 (VLHS) and the Vietnam Longitudinal Survey 1995-1998 (VLS). The Vietnam Life History Survey included 4 samples of about 100 households each, stratified by urban/rural areas. Data includes both individual and household files. Questions included household composition, marriage and fertility history, educational and employment history, residence history, and materials and contents of home. The Vietnam Longitudinal Survey was the first longitudinal survey to be conducted in the field of sociology in Vietnam, with a baseline of 1,855 households and 4,464 individuals interviewed in the first round of the survey. Three follow-up surveys were subsequently administered. For both the VLHS and the VLS, codebooks and data (in SPSS) can be freely downloaded from the site.

Virginia Emigrants to Liberia Database (Marie Tyler-McGraw and Deborah Lee)

From 1820 to 1865, the state of Virginia sent more emigrants to the newly-created independent African republic of Liberia than any other U.S. state. A 2007 book by historian Marie Tyler-McGraw, recounting Virginia’s participation in the Liberian colonization movement, led to a collaboration in which two related databases were placed online under the auspices of the Virginia Center for Digital History: a database of 3,700 emigrants and one of 250 emancipators. Stories, timelines and other resources are included on the site as well.

The Emigrants Database includes variables for first and last names, gender, age at emigration, place of origin, emancipator, ship name, date of emigration, level of education, occupation, Liberian destination, and additional notes. The Emancipators Database includes first and last names, locale, occupation, year of emancipation, ship name, emancipated names, and notes. Both databases are searchable by selected fields. If all selections are set to “any,” all records are included in the resulting table. There does not appear to be a download option.

Windows on Urban Poverty (Bruton Center and University of Texas at Dallas)
The Windows on Urban Poverty site takes Census data from 1970 through 2000 to map the geographic dimension of poverty in the United States. The user can select a city or metropolitan area, view the location of high-poverty census tracts, and observe the changes in high-poverty areas over time. The maps can also show race, ethnicity, population density, housing value and housing age. The user interface is a simplified GIS system; for a more complex mapping tool covering the same data, come to DISC and use the Census Neighborhood Change CD-ROM. Note: the Windows on Urban Poverty site was down 1/24/07 due to hackers.

World Database of Happiness (Ruut Veenhoven, Erasmus University, Rotterdam)
According to the site description, "the World Database of Happiness is an ongoing register of scientific research on the subjective enjoyment of life. It brings together findings that are scattered throughout many studies and provides a basis for synthetic work." The site includes: a bibliography of articles published using happiness data; an "item bank" of responses to national surveys in the past 50 years; information on distributional and correlational findings on happiness; and codebook information for two datasets: States of Nations and Trends in Nations. Contact the site author for data in SPSS format.

World Tables (World Bank)
World Tables, an older publication of the World Bank, provides a detailed collection of economic data and socioeconomic indicators. Standardized data is presented for numerous individual countries, useful for international comparisons. A Supplement containing revised data was published approximately six months after the main volume. Data are presented as annual times series covering multiple years (1972-1992, 1994, 1995), and are presented as Topical Pages or as Country Pages.

World Values Survey (World Values Study Group)
The World Values Survey is a worldwide investigation of sociocultural and political change. It is conducted by a network of social scientists at leading universities all around the world. The survey is performed on nationally representative samples in almost 80 societies on all six inhabited continents. A total of four waves have been carried out since 1981. Data files are available for download (free registration required), including an integrated file of all four waves, a 1995 file, and a 2000 file, each available in SPSS SAV, SPSS POR, and STATA formats. The site also includes an online data analysis module, allowing users to select countries and samples for browsing data.

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