Research Guides: SOCL 358: Sociology of Higher Education (BMC): Finding Data

Education-related Data Sources

ACE Race and Ethnicity in Higher Ed project - Data Sources
Use this list of data sources as a shortcut to possible options for finding your data.
Center for Education Policy Analysis
Stanford University's Center focuses on research to inform policies that will improve schools and teaching. Reports, like the ones linked in this news article, "Students learning English benefit more in two-language instructional programs..." are available on the website.
Digest of education statistics
The publication contains information on a variety of subjects in the field of education statistics, including the number of schools and colleges, teachers, enrollments, and graduates, in addition to educational attainment, finances, federal funds for education, libraries, and international education. Supplemental information on population trends, attitudes on education, education characteristics of the labor force, government finances, and economic trends provides background for evaluating education data.

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
Provides an enormous list of statistical publications relating to education; includes datasets and published reports. Covers all areas of education including early childhood, secondary and postsecondary education. Coverage varies.

National Center for Education Statistics -- Condition of Education Reports
Condition of Education is an annual publication from the NCES summarizing the most requested statistics on Education in the United States. See more NCES publications bysearching their Publications page .
U.S. Department of Education Public Data
The Ed Department's searchable, filterable public data listing.

Explore Census Data
Provides population, housing, economic and geographic data from the latest Decennial Census, the Economic Censuses and Surveys, and the American Community Survey. Users can view reference maps and create comparison tables and thematic maps which can be downloaded and printed. Coverage varies.

General Social Survey
The General Social Survey (GSS) 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." You can use the data explorer and download data collected since 1972.

ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research) Data Archive
Provides access to an archive of online social science data, training facilities in basic and advanced techniques of quantitative social analysis. Provides a comprehensive list of ICPSR resources and services, information on membership and governance, links to national data archives affiliated with ICPSR, and contact information.
UNdata
A single entry portal for UN databases. Find data series by searching or browsing by theme. Includes Country Profiles, Advanced Search and Glossaries to aid research. All countries and a wide range of themes are covered.

Harvard Dataverse
Dataverse is an open source web application to share, preserve, cite, explore, and analyze research data. It facilitates making data available to others, and allows you to replicate others' work more easily. The Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) collaborates with the Harvard University Library and Harvard University Information Technology organization to make the installation of the Harvard Dataverse openly available to researchers and data collectors worldwide from all disciplines, to deposit data. Information on submitting data.
Odum Institute (University of North Carolina)
In its Dataverse Network, the Odum Institute has many poll results done at the state-level.

Gallup
Reports, infographics and articles from Gallup opinion polls. Does not include dataset downloads or survey methodology files.
Pew Research Center
Pew Research Center is a think think that conducts public opinion polling and other social science research. Their Pew Global section contains research with an international focus. Several of the Publications sub-topics include a Question Search, and downloadable datasets.

Roper Center Public Opinion Archives (iPOLL)
Find results from US national public opinion surveys (1935-present). Includes public opinion research from 120+ countries. Use this database to find polls from Gallup, Pew, and more.

You can:
- Search iPOLL to find individual survey questions and answers
- Compare public opinion over time
- Find US election exit poll results
- Download full datasets for surveys curated by the Roper Center
Statista: The Leading Statistics Portal
Provides access to selected statistics and studies of over 600 industries gathered by market researchers, trade organizations, scientific publications, and government sources from 2007 to the present.
Users are explicitly prohibited from using Statista content with any third-party generative AI tools. This would create a competing product or service, disrupt Statista’s functionality, and share content to third parties. Unauthorized use may result in access restrictions.