Statistics Research for Lawyers: Where to Start?

I.      Home
II.     Where to Start?
III.    Subject Specific Resources
        i.      Business & Economics
        ii.     Criminal Justice & Public Safety
        iii.    Education
        iv.    Health & Environment
        v.     History & Government Affairs
        vi.    Immigration & Int'l Affairs
        vii.   Labor & Employment
IV.    Visualizing Data

There are many resources that have statistics and data covering a wide variety of subjects and topics. If your subject is broad or vague, these would be a good place to start looking.

Government Produced Resources:

• data.census.gov: The United States Census Bureau's user-friendly website for finding general census data, including demographic, geographic, and housing data . If you are looking for something specific measured by the census that you cannot find with data.census.gov, additional census data is available at the United States Census Bureau website.
• Data.gov: The most comprehensive collection of government data is Data.gov, which aggregates the datasets created by the Federal Government. However, it only provides the raw datasets which can be difficult to understand unless you have experience working with statistics.
• Catalog of U.S. Government Publications: Provides access to all publications produced by the Federal Government. 
• Childstats.gov: A compendium of government produced information relating to children and families.
• Datausa.io: Several different datasets about the USA, combinable and mapable.
• Google Dataset Search: A new product from Google to search across datasets held by many different organizations

Databases available through Northeastern:

• CQ Press Library: Provides access to resources on the "American government, current affairs, history, politics, public policy, and data analysis for the social sciences."
• Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research: A data archive of research in the social sciences.
• Statista: Statista is the first statistics portal in the world to integrate data on over 60,000 topics from over 18,000 sources onto a single professional platform. Categorized into 21 market sectors, Statista.com provides companies, business customers, research institutions, and the academic community with direct access to quantitative data on media, business, finance, politics, and a wide variety of other areas of interest or markets.

Public opinion data can be a valuable measure of a population's feelings on a given subject, especially politics and the economy. The following websites provide public opinion polling data:

• Gallup
• Pew Research
• Rasmussen Reports 
• RealClearPolitics

Additionally, Northeastern provides access to other databases of public opinion polling data:

• iPoll Databank
• Statista