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Data Resources and Support

Support for locating and working with datasets, statistical information, and geographic data.

U.S. States

Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) -- The ARDA contains many datasets pertaining to religion, such as surveys on topics such as the public's religious attitudes and practices, surveys of church leaders, and studies on the provision of social services by individual congregations. ARDA also provides geographic profiles of congregations and demographic profiles of denominations. Researchers should go to the Data Archive for a directory of the different studies available.

Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) -- The BRFSS was established by the Centers for Disease Control to provide data on personal behaviors that present health risks (e.g. alcohol and tobacco consumption, exercise patterns, dietary issues). The site provides both time-series data at the national and state levels for various categories of "behavioral risk" and also microdata files from which the national and state estimates are produced.

Bureau of Economic Analysis -- The BEA is an excellent source for macroeconomic data, with a focus on national accounts - GDP and its components such as income, consumption, investment, and government expenditure. It also provides much data on employment and compensation by industry. Data are available at the national and at the state and local/county levels, in annual, quarterly and (in some cases) monthly increments. Some industry-level data and balance-of-payments data are also available. See https://www.bea.gov/itable/ for direct access to the data.

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) -- The BLS contains much data on employment, wages, and prices, at both the national and sub-national levels. See https://www.bls.gov/bls/proghome.htm for a topical breakdown of the BLS' data holdings, and see https://www.bls.gov/guide/geography/ for a summary of data availability by level of geography. Be warned that the website is not always easy to navigate.

Bureau of Justice Statistics -- The BJS provides a wealth of crime and criminal justice data compiled by the US government and links to available data on other government websites and includes a tool for extracting state-level and local-level data on crime rates.

Carl Klarner Dataverse -- Carl Klarner, formerly a professor at Indiana State University, has assembled various datasets on state politics, including data on outcomes of state elections, partisan control of state legislatures and executives, and state-level economic indicators, that are accessible via his Dataverse. Some of Klarner's data on legislative election results are being updated by Princeton University.

CDC WONDER Population Information -- CDC Wonder includes a site that provides population estimates for different age, race, and gender groups. Users can get estimates at the national, state, or county levels, from 1990 onwards.

Census Bureau: Federal, State, and Local Governments -- The Census Bureau conducts various surveys of the finances and employment of state and local governments, covering topics such as tax revenue, employment, expeditures by function, and finances of public school systems.

Correlates of State Policy -- The Correlates of State Policy Data are a project at the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) at Michigan State University. The data are a compilation of annual, state-level data covering topics such as politics and partisanship, economics, criminal justice, demographics, policies and regulations, and health. See the cspp R package for various functions to create and extract subsets from the full data and create map visualizations from them.

Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) Regional Economic Data Toolkit -- The C2ER's Regional Economic Data Toolkit has state/local data on costs of living, government expenditures, economic diversity of employment, and state policies and incentives.

County Health Rankings and Roadmaps -- The County Health Rankings data are a compilation of county-level data on health outcomes, health behavior, health facilities, and socio-economic and environmental measures. There are data for annual rankings for 2010 onward and trend data for select indicators that cover longer ranges of years.

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia - Research and Data -- The Philadelphia Fed conducts research and collects data on economic conditions within its district, including state-level indices on current economic conditions and leading economic indicators. Note that each of the district banks within the Federal Reserve system collects data and constructs indices on conditions within its district as well.

Measuring American Legislatures -- The Measuring American Legislatures project is an effort to code the ideological orientations of both state legislatures and individual state legislators. Data from the project are available via the Dataverse of Boris Shor, who is one of the project's investigators.

National Institute for Money in State Politics (NIMSP) -- NIMSP is a watchdog group with an extensive clearinghouse of data on campaign contributions, campaign expenditures, and lobbying, with a focus on elections at the state level. Bulk downloads of data are also available via https://sunlightlabs.github.io/datacommons/bulk_data.html.

PolicyMap -- PolicyMap allows you to map out data on population demographics, income, poverty, housing, crime, health, the environment, education, and other topics. Uses can map out data at various levels of geogprahy - states, counties, ZIP codes, or Congressional districts, depending on the data. You can also download data in spreadsheet-friendly formats. PolicyMap is also available via Databases at Emory.

Social Explorer -- Social Explorer provides quick and easy access to current and historical census data and demographic information. Its contents include the entire U.S. Census from 1790 to 2020, annual updates from the American Community Survey, data on religious congregations for the United States for 2009 and 2010, decennial religious congregation data for 1980-2010, and carbon emissions data for 2002. Users can create reports and maps at various levels of geography, including counties, Census tracts, Census block groups, and ZIP codes, depending on data availability. Social Explorer is also available via Databases at Emory.

State Health Facts -- This resource from the Kaiser Family Foundation is an excellent source for state-level health data for the U.S. It covers topics such as health insurance coverage, health policy reform, health status and conditions, health care providers, and indicators focusing specifically on women's health and the health of ethnic/racial minorities.

State Ideology Data -- The State Ideology Data, which have been assembled by Richard C. Fording at the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa, measure the ideological leanings of both the public and political leaders for the individual states. The data cover the years 1960 onwards.

State Profiles and Energy Estimates -- The Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration produces various estimates of energy consumption and production via its State Energy Data System (SEDS). The Petroleum Navigator also provides state-level data related to petroleum consumption.

State Politics and Policy Quarterly Data Sources -- State Politics & Policy Quarterly has a Dataverse with replication datasets for articles published in the journal, covering topics such as income inequality within states and integrity of states' electoral institutions. SPPQ's Practical Researcher Data provide time-series data on political, judicial, economic, and social variables. Depending on the variable, the data coverage is from 1975 to 2006. There is also a collection of individual datasets on particular topics such as partisan balance of state governments.

U.S. Officials Job Approval Ratings (JARS) -- The U.S. Officials Job Approval Ratings page was run by Thad Beyle at UNC-Chapel Hill and contains a wealth of time-series data on job approval ratings for U.S. presidents, senators, and state governors. The copy of the site linked to here is courtesy of the Internet Archive.