| Social Science - General |
At this site, you can retrieve Extract, a program which permits easy data extraction from the General Social Surveys, and also the GSS data themselves in single year files 1972 - 1993. Written by Jesse Reichler and Dean Savage, Extract runs on PCs under DOS and is intended for use at sites where mainframe access is frustrating or difficult.
With Extract, you can select variables and years from the 1972-1993 General Social Surveys and then write variable definition and data files for use with SPSS, SAS, QSTATS, or dBASE. You can also output ASCII data files and variable lists. The questions from the GSS codebook have been integrated into the program to permit examination of question wording while making your selections.
Social Statistics Briefing Room (SSBR) at the WhitehouseThe purpose of this service is to provide easy access to current Federal social indicators. It provides links to information produced by a number of Federal agencies.
The University of Virginia maintains The Social Sciences Data Center which was created in 1993 to support the curricular and research needs of the University of Virginia community. The Social Sciences Data Center includes a rich collection of numeric data distributed through the US Depository Library Program, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), and some 75 international government organizations, as well as data from non-governmental surveys such as the National Health and Social Life Survey. Within this collection you can find County and City Data Books for 1988 and 1994, a "County Business Patterns" data base providing county, state, and national level business data for 1977-1993, election data for the state of Virginia, Uniform Crime Reports (obtained form the University of Michigan via ftp), statistics for The Association of Research Libraries (regarding variables such as library budgets, staffing, acquisitions rates, and collection sizes), and various other subjects.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Labor. The BLS maintains a webpage devoted entirely to Foreign Labor Data. This information is almost an exact mirror to the information that is maintained for U.S. labor statistics. If you are looking for a specific country, access the "Most Requested Series" which will give you a choice of eighteen different countries (most, if not all, are considered "developed" countries). Of course, data is also available for U.S. labor statistics.
The National Aging Information Center (NAIC) maintains a large collection of data sets that are downloadable in Portable Document Formats (PDF). The center also has a webpage which explains how to use PDFs and where to download the software required to view them. Once you have this software on your computer you can access their data files regarding aging in America, provided by the center's parent organization, the Administration on Aging.
The Progress of Nations 1996, is a webpage maintained by UNICEF. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General of the United Nations explains that "The Progress of Nations 1996 records what is happening to the health, nutrition, and education of children today. It monitors not only specific advances and regression in some of the key areas of human well-being, but also the overall investment that countries are making in their own futures." Data sets provided include: statistical indicators for less populous countries, immunization records, statistical profiles for world regions, a suicide index for youth, national performance gaps (see explanatory page for details), and school standards. This site contains many more data sets and quite a few of the articles contain information than can be easily extracted.
Money magazine ranks the best places to live in the U.S.
Statistics Canada publishes a wide variety of information on economic and social conditions in Canada. To access basic statistical information, select from one of these broad topics: the land, the people, the economy, and the state. Or you can go directly to the Service Centres page which has links to either an ftp or a gopher site. Data can be downloaded in either binary-executable or PDF formats.
The Congressonal District Ranking Book is maintained by David H. Winston, Senior Fellow For Statistical Policy Analysis, Christine L. Olson, Policy Analyst, Economics, and Rea S. Hederman, Research Analyst at The Heritage Foundation. The book contains information compiled from the 1990 Long Form Census. The purpose of this webpage is to understand the demographic composition of the districts that members of Congress represent in order to see what issues Congressional members might be concerned about. The District Ranking Book is broken down into four main categories with various subcategories. The main divisions are: Vital Statistics, Education, Occupation/Employment, and Housing/Public Works.
The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), located within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan , is a membership-based, not-for-profit organization serving member colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. ICPSR provides: access to the world's largest archive of computerized social science data, training facilities for the study of quantitative social analysis techniques, and resources for social scientists using advanced computer technologies.
To access the data sets at this site you can either go directly to the ICPSR Archive or browse through some of the various content areas such as Criminal Justice or Aging. The only drawback to this site, and it's a very small one for the amount of information available, is the requirement to submit your e-mail address and fill out a short survey form before accessing the data. Both requirements are quite painless and well worth the quality and breath of data available.