STAT 3220: Finding and Evaluating Data

Data Literacy workshop for STAT 3220

Welcome Stat 3220!

This guide will help you discover and evaluate sources.

The presentation slides are available. The slides cover the general concepts about finding and evaluating data. (Be sure to view the Speaker Notes.) This research guide points to specific resources available through the library or publicly.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out!

Citation Guide - How to Cite within a paper

Unlike many other disciplines, Math and Statistics don't have a single citation style in publications. However, we recommend you use APA citation style. We recommend using a citation generator to create accurate citations you can copy into your paper. You will have an in-text citation in your paper where you reference websites, journals, data sources, etc. At the end of your paper you will have a "References" section where you will have the full citation.

Example-
In-text citation:

"College Basketball Dataset" (Kaggle, 2023)
"Vulnerable Catchments" (Ministry for the Environment, 2016)

Reference Entry:

College Basketball Dataset. (2023, September 12). Kaggle. https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/andrewsundberg/college-basketball-dataset
Ministry for the Environment. (2016). Vulnerable catchments (Version 17) [Data set]. https://data.mfe.govt.nz/layer/53523-vulnerable-catchments/

Citation Machine
Citation Machine is a user friendly citation manager. Enter your information and Citation Machine spits out your citation.
Purdue Online Writing Lab
For many years, Purdue University's Online Writing Lab has been an authority on citation formats and styles.
APA Homepage
If you want to read more documentation about APA style, you can find it on the American Psychological Association Homepage

Track down sources in academic literaure

This is our #1 strategy for how to start looking for data when you have no idea where to start looking!

Every empirical academic paper is going to have a methods section. Look for articles similar to a topic you are interested in, and check the methods section. What data are they using?

Here is a real-life example. A group of students asked Jenn about Major League Baseball injuries, and she found this: Injury Rates in Major League Baseball During the 2020 COVID-19 Season. The very first line of the Methods section states, “Data from the 2018-2020 MLB transaction reports were extracted online at mlb.com/transactions.”

Remember to iterate

Start in one place and keep iterating. Use the first place to see if sources are cited, and work from there.

Statista is a great place to try this strategy. Statista only offers basic statistics (tables and charts, not full datasets). However, they always cite their sources. Keep digging at the source to see if you can find an original dataset. You can use the same strategy with PolicyMap as well.

Statista
Statista.com consolidates statistical data on over 80,000 topics from more than 22,500 sources.
PolicyMap
PolicyMap is an online data and mapping tool that enables government, commercial, non-profit and academic institutions to access data about communities and markets across the US. Use it for research, market studies, business planning, site selection, grant applications and impact analysis.

Find library licensed datasets

These are our "best bets" data sources available to you through UVA Library. They cover a broad range of topics.

These are great places to look for a dataset that is clean, readily downloadable, and easy to import into your statistical software. If you are a little flexible about your topic, looking here first will save you some effort that you might spend looking for data, cleaning data, etc.

Data & Statistics Research Guide
This guide lists a number of "top" datasets organized by discipline.

Social Explorer
Interactive Maps and Reports provide easy access to demographic information about the United States. Data comes from the Census beginning in 1790 and from the Religious Congregations and Membership Study beginning in 1980. Also has crime and health data.
Sage Data
Sage Data repository contains over 18.9 billion datapoints from over 400 databases sourced from 70 public and private organizations. The datasets contained in Sage Data are structured and homogenized to permit correlation of multiple, diverse indicators. The Sage Data repository continues to grow regularly with the addition of new datasets drawn from public and private sources.

Library Licensed Downloadable Datasets
All the library licensed downloadable datasets are listed here. Of particular interest would be election data, Historical Business Data, and Gallup Survey Data.
Google Dataset Search
Google Dataset Search lets you find datasets hosted in data repositories only. Searching here first is a good choice when looking for data that might be hosted in an official "data repository."

ICPSR
The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) provides a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction. Users may view documentation, download raw data, and search a bibliography of data-related literature. (You must create a personal ICPSR account with your virginia.edu email address in order to download data.)

Look for government data

Data.gov
US federal government's open data portal
Virginia Open Data Portal
City of Charlottesville Open Data Portal
Our World in Data
Nice resource for finding international data on all kinds of policy-related topics. Note that you can download the data as a CSV file. Check out the Source tab for information about the data file and the original source of the data. Because they use data from third parties, you might want to check out how to cite OWiD sources correctly.

Use the US Census

For those of you using the US Census, you might want to check out these resources:

Census Guide from UVA Library

Social Explorer
Interactive Maps and Reports provide easy access to demographic information about the United States. Data comes from the Census beginning in 1790 and from the Religious Congregations and Membership Study beginning in 1980. Also has crime and health data.

Find data from news sources

Also see News sources’ GitHub repos: NYTimes, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, etc.

BuzzFeedNews/everything repo
An index of all of BuzzFeed's open-source data, analysis, libraries, tools, and guides.

Generative AI at UVA

Access to UVA Copilot Chat

To log into Copilot Chat using your UVA credentials, use UVA ITS page for Generative AI Tools (links to a UVA ITS webpage).

This page also has a useful FAQ if you run into any problems.

The easiest way to verify that you're using the Pro and protected version of Copilot Chat after you have logged in to your Microsoft 365 account is to check the upper right-hand corner of the page. It should display a green shield containing a check mark, indicating that you are using the UVA Copilot chat, with Enterprise data protection (links to a Microsoft page), as shown in the image below. In addition, you should see your account information in the lower left corner of the page.

Successfully Logging into Copilot Chat

In the past, ITS has reported some hiccups with logging into the UVA licensed Copilot Chat. If you find after signing in that you don't see green protected icon or your account information, here are our best tips:

Clear your browser cache and restart the browser.
Contact ITS support for additional help (links to a UVA ITS webpage) - ITS is aware of the past login challenges. The issues appear to be resolved, but ITS can help if they arise for you.