Susanne Caro of New Mexico State Library shares her tips and tricks for statistic searching with federal government web sites.
Susanne's go-to sources for statistics:
- The Census
- Congressional Research Service reports-good for background info.
- Historical Statistics of the United States- if you need to go back in time a ways.
- Statistical Programs of the US Government- somewhat a replacement for Statistical Abstracts, which is no longer being published by the government (ProQuest has a paid version)-a place to find out what department collects which stats.
Strategy questions before you get started:
- What agencies have the info?
- What level of info do I need?
- How far back do I need to go?
- What tool will point me in the right direction?
- Can I contact the agency for questions ? (Usually you can)
- What limits are there to access?
Tips and tricks:
- Look at the reports that come with the statistics for context.
- Terms change -e.g., the term STEM was created in the 2000s. Questions asked and the way data is collected also change.
- If you are not sure, contact the agency to confirm what data is available.
- Make sure to check what is NOT included!
- Statistics may no longer be collected due to budget cuts. Only the Census, which is required by the Constitution, will never be cut.
- Look for a codebook or other area that defines terms- each agency may have different terminology- e.g. "educational attainment" for what degrees people have.
- Check what dates are covered.
- You may have to combined tables to get your data-e.g. if you want vaccination rates by political alignment, combine 1 table vaccination rates and 1 table with political party affiliation.
- URLs are often standardized so you can change the year in the URL for another year's data.
- Keep in mind "point of view"-e.g., EPA will deal with pesticides as an environmental problem, USDA as an expense for farmers.
Some of Susanne's favorite web sites:
- FRED- a lot of great economic data.
- BEARFACTS- personal income and gross domestic product.
- NCES DataLab- a lot of ways to combine educational statistics (requires free registration).
- Data.gov- large number of searchable datasets- just the data with no reports for context.
- Census Bureau Upcoming Releases-- check what datasets are coming soon to census.gov.
- OMB Historical Tables- past budgets of the United States.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics- economic and employment data.
- CDE- Crime data.
Whether or not you watch the webinar recording, you can get good practice by downloading the slides and trying some of the searches. The handout has a list of what departments collect which statistics.
--Andrea H. @GLCL
