Sociology: Finding Data

Data Collections & Dataset Finders

UC San Diego Social Sciences Data Collection
Miscellaneous datasets purchased for the UC San Diego community. Includes:
Data on Terrorist Suspects (DOTS)
Field (California) Poll, 1956 - [Latest Release]
International Country Risk Guide: Table 3B: Political Risk Points by Component
International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE), 1968 - [most recent]
Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) 1978-2003 [Repository Data]
POLIDATA Presidential Results by Congressional District (PRCD)

DataCite
Search for datasets across over 1000 different major data centers and repositories including ICPSR, Harvard Dataverse, Data-Planet, the California Digital Library, Figshare, Dryad, the Center for Open Science, UC San Diego Library Digital Collections, etc.
ICPSR Data Archive
The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. World's largest archive of social science data. Election data, opinion polls, more. Special collections on Health, Education, Aging, Crime, Substance Abuse. Raw data; no tables. To download data, create a personal account using your ucsd.edu email address while accessing the database from a UC San Diego computer, UCSD-PROTECTED wireless, or the VPN.

Dataverse (Harvard)
Access the world's largest collection of social science research data here by searching across or browsing through one of the virtual data archives (called "dataverses") listed below. Data is uploaded by researchers from around the world.
Odum Institute Dataverse Network - data catalog
Data catalog for the Odum Institute, which maintains one of the oldest and largest catalog of machine-readable data in the U.S., plus harvest data catalogs for the Dataweb, NARA, IQSS, Roper, and ICPSR.
re3data.org
Registry of research data repositories
Population Reference Bureau
A database with hundreds of variables for the US and the world.

Data Citation Index
Indexes research data, including data studies and data sets, and links them to the scientific literature to track data citation. Part of Web of Science.

ResearchDataGov
A web portal for discovering and requesting access to restricted microdata from federal statistical agencies. ResearchDataGov.org is a product of the federal statistical agencies and units, created in response to the Foundations of Evidence-based Policymaking Act of 2018. The site and service is built by and hosted at ICPSR at the University of Michigan, under contract and guidance from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics within the National Science Foundation.

Major Opinion Poll Survey Series

Gallup Analytics
Explore leading economic indicators and social and wellbeing data collected since 2005 in more than 160 countries and areas. Gallup Analytics provides topline access to data from the Gallup World Poll, the Gallup US Daily Tracking, and the historical data from the Gallup Poll Social Series (GPSS). Gallup Analytics includes questions and indexes covering topics such as economics, politics, and wellbeing. One user can access the portal at any given time. Does not include respondent data for World Poll; contact the Library for assistance in requesting respondent data for Gallup Poll Social Series (GPSS).
How Does the Gallup Poll Social Series Work?
Gallup conducts one GPSS survey per month, with each devoted to a different topic, as follows:
- January: Mood of the Nation
- February: World Affairs
- March: Environment
- April: Economy and Finance
- May: Values and Beliefs
- June: Minority Rights and Relations (conducted periodically from 2001 to 2021)
- July: Consumption Habits
- August: Work and Education
- September: Governance
- October: Crime
- November: Health
- December: Lifestyle (conducted periodically)
To figure out which dataset you need, in Gallup Analytics choose Topic > Data Source: Gallup Poll Social Series and note which “Main Topic” includes your metric.
Roper Center for Public Opinion Research
An archive of public opinion and survey research. The Search for Datasets includes only those surveys for which the Roper Center holds the datasets (microdata or individual level), with brief descriptions of each. These include national, state, and foreign surveys, as well as special samples such as leaders or youth. iPOLL contains the aggregated question-level results from the US national surveys in the catalog, as well as a great deal of additional survey data from news releases and survey reports.

Pew Research Center
Provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America.

ICPSR Data Archive
The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. World's largest archive of social science data. Election data, opinion polls, more. Special collections on Health, Education, Aging, Crime, Substance Abuse. Raw data; no tables. To download data, create a personal account using your ucsd.edu email address while accessing the database from a UC San Diego computer, UCSD-PROTECTED wireless, or the VPN.

Odum Institute Dataverse
This public opinion database maintained by the University of North Carolina contains more than 230,000 questions from surveys conducted since 1958. It is the repository for all Louis Harris public opinion data and Roper Center nonproprietary poll data as well as state-level polling organizations from 22 states, with strong coverage of Southern states. Questions are searchable by keyword, date, study number, study title, or state.
General Social Surveys (GSS)
The General Social Surveys (GSS) measures attitudes toward social and public policy issues, economic status, political events, work, and family life. In addition to questions asked each year, topical modules are included on a rotating basis that focus on current issues such as gender equity, religious beliefs, and perception of work.

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The GSS have been conducted by the National Opinion Research Center annually since 1972, except for the years 1979, 1981, and 1992 (a supplement was added in 1992), and biennially beginning in 1994. For each round of surveys, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research prepares a cumulative dataset that merges previous years of the GSS into a single file, with each year or survey constituting a sub-file.
California Public Opinion Polls - UC Berkeley D-Lab
Search the Field Polls and IGS polls using SDA, or read the reports in eScholarship.

Sociology: Finding Data

Social Sciences Librarian

Other Useful Guides

Data Collections & Dataset Finders

Major Opinion Poll Survey Series