Social Science Data Research Guide

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) maintains and provides access to thousands of social science datasets for research and instruction. This is a good first place to start when looking for social science data for secondary analysis.

The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research is one of the world's leading archives of social science data, specializing in data from surveys of public opinion. The data held by the Roper Center range from the 1930s, when survey research was in its infancy, to the present. Most of the data are from the United States, but over 50 nations are represented. Data can be downloaded by topic, by question, or by dataset.

The Government Information Department has a rich collection of official copies in print of the Census of United States conducted between 1790 and 1970. We also have a series of GeoLytics Census Data Products for 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 Census and CD/DVDs for 1990 and 2000 Census distributed by U.S. Census Bureau. For other historic census data, you may also check the University of Virginia Library’ Historical Census site.

The Census Bureau's primary vehicle for distributing recent Census data. Data from the 2000 and 2010 Census, economic censuses since 2002, and the American Community Survey are also available here.

Features a list of data resources from Federal government agencies. Includes such topics as, business, economics, defense, international relations, environment, energy, agriculture, family, geospatial data, health, nutrition, jobs and education, public safety, science, technology, transportation, and recreation.

The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.