Sources of Data

There is a wealth of data available for public use, including:

• Existing statistics, including official statistics produced by government, or other agencies and public bodies. These statistics are designed for public use and are often presented as tables, but can also be charts, infographics or maps. They are useful resources to add evidence to coursework, dissertations or other research work
• Online data analysis tools, which allow you to do some simple analysis of survey data online

• Datasets, contain the raw data from which many of the official statistics are produced, and the data used in the online analysis tools. Many of these datasets are the result of a large-scale household survey and stored at the UK Data Service (UKDS). To use these datasets you need to find the one/s you need for your research, download the dataset, and analyse it using a statistical software package such as SPSS

(It is also worth checking out the award-winning Knowledge Discovery Nuggets (KDnuggets) for a massive list of data sources (open-source, governmental, private, and third sector))

The data in this section is organised into:

Online Data Tools

Data by Theme

Data by Type