Research Guides: Political Science Research Methods: DataSets

Library Databases

These datasets require you to be on campus or to log in with your UCCS account.

ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research) This link opens in a new window
ICPSR maintains a data archive of more than 500,000 files of research in the social sciences. It hosts 16 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.

The following list contains free sources of data.

American Presidency Project's Data Archive
A collection of several data sets on the presidency.
ANES Data Center
The American National Election Studies (ANES) contains numerous election studies from 1948 to present. Note: You must create an account through ANES to access the data.
Gallup
Gallup.Com provides data-driven news based on US and world polls, daily tracking and public opinion research.
Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior
The American National Election Studies' Guide provides immediate access to tables and graphs that display the ebb and flow of public opinion, electoral behavior, and choice in American politics over time.
NBER Data
The National Bureau of Economic Research lists several economic related data sets.
Pew Research Center
Contains polls, public opinion research and national surveys on public attitudes toward press, politics, public policy issues.
VoteView
Tracks Congressional voting behavior data gather by Howard Rosenthal and Keith Poole, professors of political science.

Many governmental websites contain download data sets.

Data.gov
A major aggregator of data sets produced by the United States government.
Reginfo.gov
Data provided by the Office of information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget.
U.S. Census Bureau
Contains a wealth of exportable data on social indicators, demographics, business and more.
Economic Indicators
Provides timely access to the daily releases of key economic indicators from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U.S. Census Bureau.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Principal fact-finding agency for the federal government in the area of labor economics and statistics.
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Collects and analyzes information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government.
National Center for Health Statistics
Provides US public health statistics including diseases, pregnancies, births, aging, and mortality.
National Center for Education Statistics
Primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education.

EuroStat
Created by the European Commission, Eurostat is a gateway to numerous data sets and indicators on European countries.
Freedom in the World (Freedom House Source)
Reflects developments that took place in individual countries.
IMF Data and Statistics
The International Monetary Fund publishes exchange rates and other economic and financial indicators; you can focus on a single country, group of countries, or the entire world.
Polity IV Project
This project collects and analyzes data on regime change and the effects of regime authority through 2013.
United Nations (UN) Statistical Databases
Contains international data at the international level. Also check out the UNdata for easily exportable data.
World Bank Data
The Data Catalog provides download access to over 2,000 indicators from World Bank data sources.

In order to understand, interpret, and analyze raw data sets, you need to find the data set's:

Summary or Description of the data set
Codebook (or at least the original survey/questionaire)
Data Set (try to download it as a Deliminated .txt or .csv file so you can import it into MS Excel)