Political Science & Public Administration

"The mission of the American National Election Studies (ANES) is to inform explanations of election outcomes by providing data that support rich hypothesis testing, maximize methodological excellence, measure many variables, and promote comparisons across people, contexts, and time."

The GSS gathers data on contemporary American society in order to monitor and explain trends and constants in attitudes, behaviors, and attributes. Hundreds of trends have been tracked since 1972. In addition, since the GSS adopted questions from earlier surveys, trends can be followed for up to 70 years.

1962 - present. Provides access to an archive of raw social science data for research and instruction. Electronic access to ICPSR is funded by the College of Arts and Sciences. You must create an account in order to access the data.

Election Administration by the Numbers: An Analysis of Available Datasets and How to Use Them, 2012. This report from the Pew Center on the States discusses strengths and weaknesses of several major datasets for studying election administration.

SDA is a set of programs for the documentation and Web-based analysis of survey data.

The Center has five objectives: to monitor trends in poverty and inequality, to support scientific analysis of poverty and inequality, to develop science-based policy on poverty and inequality, to disseminate data and research on poverty and inequality, and to train the next generation of scholars, policy analysts, and politicians.

The International IDEA Voter Turnout Website contains the most comprehensive global collection of voter turnout statistics available. Regularly updated voter turnout figures for national presidential and parliamentary elections since 1945, as well as European Parliament elections, are presented country by country using both the number of registered voters and voting age population (VAP) as indicators.

The World Values Survey is a global network of social scientists studying changing values and their impact on social and political life, led by an international team of scholars, with the WVS association and secretariat headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.

Harvard Dataverse is a free data repository open to all researchers from any discipline, both inside and outside of the Harvard community, where you can share, archive, cite, access, and explore research data. Each individual dataverse is a customizable collections of datasets (or a virtual repository) for organizing, managing, and showcasing datasets.

FedStats is a portal to the statistical websites of government agencies. It is browse-able alphabetically or by subject. Agency websites often have statistics on subjects not covered by the Census, or statistics that go more in-depth.

This section of uscourts.gov provides statistical data and analysis on the business of the federal Judiciary. Specific publications address the work of the appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts; the probation and pretrial services systems; and other components of the U.S. courts.

Official website for the US Census. It is a portal to various Census resources, including the American Community Survey, the Economic Census, and downloadable map files for GIS.

Provides datasets produced by government agencies.

Surveys and programs

U. S. level stats--A rich source of information about America's health. As the Nation's principal health statistics agency, they compile statistical information to guide actions and policies to improve the health of those living in the U.S.

The Statistical Abstract of the United States is an aggregate of statistics from various sources. It is easily searchable by subject and has tables covering most common statistical questions.

Provided by the University of Virginia, the Historical Census Browser allows searching of national census data from 1790-1960.

PDF copies of the Statistical Abstract of the United States from 1789-2012

Georgia population data by county. Housed on the website of the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget.

Basic demographic information searchable by country, region, age group, and year.

Global development data

"Compile and disseminate global statistical information, develop standards and norms for statistical activities, and support countries’ efforts to strengthen their national statistical systems."

Time series data on IMF lending, exchange rates and other economic and financial indicators.

Statistices on European Union (EU) that enable comparisons between countries and regions.

The mission of the OECD is to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.

The mission of the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) is to advance human development. The goal is to contribute towards the expansion of opportunities, choice and freedom. The office works towards this goal by promoting innovative new ideas, advocating practical policy changes, and constructively challenging policies and approaches that constrain human development. The office works with others to achieve change through writing and research, data analysis and presentation, support to national and regional analysis and outreach and advocacy work.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website offers a variety of options for researching current health issues including, up-to-date information on current diseases and illnesses, vaccine information, general health information, safety, and wellness. Information is available not only for consumers, but for health care professionals as well. Access to statistical data and CDC publications is available.

The CIRI Human Rights Dataset contains standards-based quantitative information on government respect for 15 internationally recognized human rights for 202 countries, annually from 1981-2011. It is designed for use by scholars and students who seek to test theories about the causes and consequences of human rights violations, as well as policy makers and analysts who seek to estimate the human rights effects of a wide variety of institutional changes and public policies including democratization, economic aid, military aid, structural adjustment, and humanitarian intervention.

The Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) serves as the United Nations’ regional hub promoting cooperation among countries to achieve inclusive and sustainable development. The largest regional intergovernmental platform with 53 Member States and 9 associate members, ESCAP has emerged as a strong regional think-tank offering countries sound analytical products that shed insight into the evolving economic, social and environmental dynamics of the region.

The Manifesto Project provides the scientific community with parties’ policy positions derived from a content analysis of parties’ electoral manifestos. It covers over 1000 parties from 1945 until today in over 50 countries on five continents.

This dataset includes the data and replication information necessary to replicate Cali M. Ellis, Michael C. Horowitz, and Allan C. Stam, “Introducing the LEAD Dataset.” International Interactions. 41:4 (2015), pp. 718-741. The Leader Experience and Attribute Descriptions (LEAD) data set provides a rich source of new information about the personal lives and experiences of over 2,000 state leaders from 1875–2004. For the first time, we can combine insights from psychology and human development with large-N data on interstate conflict for a new theory of leadership and interstate relations. The data set provides details about military experiences, childhood, education, personal and family life, and occupational history before leaders assumed power. The data are available in leader-year format and are compatible with existing tools for analysis such as EUGene (Bennett and Stam 2000).

Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) at the department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University and the Centre for the Study of Civil War at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) have collaborated in the production of a dataset of armed conflicts, both internal and external, in the period 1946 to the present.

The International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE) project quantifies data on the characteristics of transnational terrorist groups, their activities that carry international impact and the environment in which they operate.

The goal of this project is to continue the theoretical development of the model and to develop a dataset with which the hypotheses can be tested. Data on instances in which sanctions were threatened, but not imposed, do not currently exist. Currently, this project has collected data on instances of both the threat and implementation of sanctions during the period from 1971-2000.

The Historical Index of Ethnic Fractionalization (HIEF) dataset contains an ethnic fractionalization index for 165 countries across all continents. The dataset covers annually the period 1945-2013. The ethnic fractionalization index corresponds to the probability that two randomly drawn individuals within a country are not from the same ethnic group. The new dataset is a natural extension of previous ethnic fractionalization indices and it allows its users to compare developments in ethnic fractionalization over time. The applications of HIEF pertain to the pattern of ethnic diversity across countries and over time.

Provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities.

The project provides a unique lens into the genealogy of violent extremist organizations. The site is intended for students, scholars, journalists, policy analysts and anyone interested in violent oppositional organizations. For example, after al-Shabaab’s attack on the mall in Nairobi in September 2013, news organizations could use the site to read a detailed profile of the group and see where they were accused of taking part in other attacks.

The Global Terrorism Database (GTD)™ is the most comprehensive unclassified database of terrorist attacks in the world. The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) makes the GTD available via this site in an effort to improve understanding of terrorist violence, so that it can be more readily studied and defeated. The GTD is produced by a dedicated team of researchers and technical staff.

a United Nations agency to coordinate international health activities and to help governments improve health services

Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) is a new approach to conceptualizing and measuring democracy. We provide a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that reflects the complexity of the concept of democracy as a system of rule that goes beyond the simple presence of elections. The V-Dem project distinguishes between five high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian, and collects data to measure these principles.

The Center for Systemic Peace (CSP) was founded in 1997. It is engaged in innovative research on the problem of political violence within the structural context of the dynamic global system, that is, global systems analysis. The Center supports scientific research and quantitative analysis in many issue areas related to the fundamental problems of violence in both human relations and societal-systemic development processes.

The Fund for Peace (FFP) works to prevent conflict and promote sustainable security globally by building relationships and trust across diverse sectors. Founded in 1957, FFP is an independent, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. and Abuja, Nigeria.

Our objective is to create practical tools and approaches for conflict mitigation that are contextually relevant, timely, and useful to those who can help create greater stability. Our approach brings together local knowledge and expertise with innovative tools and technologies to help anticipate and alleviate the conditions that lead to conflict.

The PopuList offers academics and journalists an overview of populist, far right, far left and Eurosceptic parties in Europe since 1989. The PopuList is supported by the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies, The Guardian, and the ECPR Standing Group on Extremism and Democracy.

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point educates, advises, and conducts research to equip present and future leaders with the intellectual tools necessary to understand the challenges of terrorism and counterterrorism.

The Foreign Aid Explorer shows the multi-dimensional picture of U.S. foreign assistance through a highly visual and interactive website. The website makes it easy for all users to find and retrieve the data they need. For the casual user, there are interactive maps and graphics that clearly lay out the details of foreign aid, allowing users to explore foreign aid data across countries, sectors, and over time.

SIPRI is an independent international institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament. Established in 1966, SIPRI provides data, analysis and recommendations, based on open sources, to policymakers, researchers, media and the interested public. Based in Stockholm, SIPRI is regularly ranked among the most respected think tanks worldwide.

The research at INCORE, and at the school more broadly is highly interdisciplinary in nature and draws on a broad range of expertise that spans criminology, community work, governance, peace-making, political science, public administration, public policy, restorative practice, social policy, sociology, social work and youth work.