Social Science Data

"The Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS) currently surveys cohorts of first-time, beginning students at three points in time: at the end of their first year, and then three and six years after first starting in postsecondary education. It collects data on a variety of topics, including student demographic characteristics, school and work experiences, persistence, transfer, and degree attainment."

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"The National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) are a set of surveys designed to gather information at multiple points in time on the labor market activities and other significant life events of several groups of men and women. For more than 4 decades, NLS data have served as an important tool for economists, sociologists, and other researchers."

California’s new accountability and continuous improvement system provides information about how local educational agencies and schools are meeting the needs of California’s diverse student population based on a concise set of measures.

"Data files pertaining to student and school demographics that can be downloaded to your computer."

"The Academic Performance Index (API) is the cornerstone of California's Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999; it measures the academic performance and growth of schools on a variety of academic measures."

Data & Tools: "This website has the key indicators of the condition of education in the United States. These indicators summarize important developments and trends using the latest statistics and are updated as data become available. A Congressionally mandated annual report on these indicators is provided to the White House and Congress each year.

In addition, this website has Spotlights on issues of current policy interest. These Spotlights take a more in-depth look at the issues through text, graphics and short videos."

"The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) focuses on children's early school experiences beginning with kindergarten and following children through middle school. The ECLS-K data provide descriptive information on children's status at entry to school, their transition into school, and their progression through 8th grade. The longitudinal nature of the ECLS-K data enables researchers to study how a wide range of family, school, community, and individual factors are associated with school performance."

"Ed-Data is a partnership of the California Department of Education, EdSource and the Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) designed to offer educators, policy makers, the legislature, parents, and the public quick access to timely and comprehensive data about K-12 education in California."

"For more than four decades, the General Social Survey (GSS) has studied the growing complexity of American society. It is the only full-probability, personal-interview survey designed to monitor changes in both social characteristics and attitudes currently being conducted in the United States."

"The GSS has been a reliable source of data to help researchers, students, and journalists monitor and explain trends in American behaviors, demographics, and opinions. You'll find the complete GSS data set on this site, and can access the GSS Data Explorer to explore, analyze, extract, and share custom sets of GSS data."

"The Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) is a national longitudinal study of the American higher education system. It is regarded as the most comprehensive source of information on college students."

"The India Human Development Survey (IHDS) is a nationally representative, multi-topic survey of 41,554 households in 1503 villages and 971 urban neighborhoods across India. The first round of interviews were completed in 2004-5; data are publicly available through ICPSR. A second round of IHDS reinterviewed most of these households in 2011-12 (N=42,152) and data for same can be found here."

"The India Human Development Survey 2005 (IHDS) is a nationally representative, multi-topic survey of 41,554 households in 1,503 villages and 971 urban neighborhoods across India. Two one-hour interviews in each household covered topics concerning health, education, employment, economic status, marriage, fertility, gender relations, and social capital. Children aged 8-11 completed short reading, writing and arithmetic tests. Additional village, school, and medical facility interviews are also available. "

"The India Human Development Survey (IHDS) is a nationally representative multi-topic panel survey of households conducted in 1503 villages and 971 urban neighborhoods across India. In IHDS-I (ICPSR 22626), two one-hour interviews in each household covered topics concerning health, education, employment, economic status, marriage, fertility, gender relations, and social capital. Children aged 8-11 completed short reading, writing, and arithmetic tests. IHDS-II (ICPSR 36151) data are mostly re-interviews of households interviewed for IHDS-I."

"The India Human Development Survey-II (IHDS-II), 2011-12 is a nationally representative, multi-topic survey of 42,152 households in 1,503 villages and 971 urban neighborhoods across India. These data are mostly re-interviews of households interviewed for IHDS-I (ICPSR 22626) in 2004-05. Two one-hour interviews in each household covered topics concerning health, education, employment, economic status, marriage, fertility, gender relations, and social capital. Children aged 8-11 completed short reading, writing and arithmetic tests."

"The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is the statistics, research, and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Education. We are independent and non-partisan. Our mission is to provide scientific evidence on which to ground education practice and policy and to share this information in formats that are useful and accessible to educators, parents, policymakers, researchers, and the public."

"This datafile contains the U.S. TIMSS 2007 data, including data that were collected only in the United States and not included on the international database available from the IEA. The additional data relate to the race and ethnicity of students and the percentage of students in a school eligible for the Federal free and reduced lunch program, among other variables. This datafile is intended to be used in conjunction with the international datafile available from the IEA."

"IPEDS has five module-based tutorials from the Distance Learning Dataset Training System (DLDT), which is an online tool designed to introduce you to the IPEDS datasets, design, and considerations for analysis to facilitate successful analyses. The modules provide information about the specific datasets and tools needed to find published reports, explore and acquire data, create data files, and conduct analyses in selected statistical software packages."

"U.S. national public opinion survey results from the Roper Center. iPoll Databank does not include state polls. Search poll question texts and retrieve response rates.

"The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, located at Cornell University, is one of the world’s leading archives of social science data, specializing in data from public opinion surveys. The Center’s mission is to collect, preserve, and disseminate public opinion data; to serve as a resource to help improve the practice of survey research; and to broaden the understanding of public opinion through the use of survey data in the United States and abroad."

"Monitoring the Future is an ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of American secondary school students, college students, and young adults. Each year, a total of approximately 50,000 8th, 10th and 12th grade students are surveyed (12th graders since 1975, and 8th and 10th graders since 1991)."

An invaluable index to health related datasets.

[NDACAN is also indexed under "Data Sources by Topic: Health"]. "A resource since 1988, the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN) promotes scholarly exchange among researchers in the child maltreatment field. NDACAN acquires microdata from leading researchers and national data collection efforts and makes these datasets available to the research community for secondary analysis."

"The National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) provides descriptive data on the educational activities of the U.S. population and offers researchers, educators, and policymakers a variety of statistics on the condition of education in the United States.

The NHES surveys cover learning at all ages, from early childhood to school age through adulthood. The most recent data collection in 2012 consisted of two surveys: Parent and Family Involvement in Education and Early Childhood Program Participation."

"The Office of Population Research (OPR) at Princeton University is a leading demographic research and training center. OPR has a distinguished history of contributions in formal demography and the study of fertility change. In recent years there has been increasing research activity in the areas of health and wellbeing, social demography, and migration and urbanization."

"Correctional education and the school-to-prison pipeline."

"Beyond producing original research, the Prison Policy Initiative edits several databases to empower activists, journalists, and policymakers to shape effective criminal justice policy. This page contains links to virtually all the empirical criminal justice research available online, organized by category and publication date. If you know what you are looking for, you may also search the database."

"Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) is a study of how families, schools, and neighborhoods affect child and adolescent development; examining the causes and pathways of juvenile delinquency, adult crime, substance abuse, and violence and detailed look at the environments including its people, institutions, and resources."

"The School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) is the primary source of school-level data on crime and safety for the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The SSOCS is a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of about 3,500 public elementary and secondary schools."

"The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) collects case-level information on all children in foster care and those who have been adopted with title IV-E agency involvement."