POLS 223: American Political Process: The Congress (HC)

Rankings by Penn's International Relations program of think tanks regionally and by subject area.

A research firm focused on public well being in the areas of education, family support, health, and labor. Many of its reports are available for you to use on the company's web site.
Other companies providing research services to the United States government also make many of their reports available to the public. See Westat, MDRC, and RTI International as examples.

Provides online access to abstracts and full-text articles on public policy research and analysis from think tanks, university research programs, research organizations and publishers. Much better results than searching Google.

SSRN makes recent research in the social sciences available quickly. You can find working papers and pre-publication journal articles available full text. This is a good place to find very recent material. Use the Advanced Search option.

This publication records what members have said on the floor of the Senate and the House of Representatives since 1873. They also on occasion have the texts of documents read into the record. This is an important online source for finding debate and for finding members' explanations for their political actions.

The Congressional Research Service prepares policy reports for Congress on all issues under consideration for legislation. Beginning in 2018, these reports have been released to the public. See CRS Reports from congress.gov for these recent and updated reports. Work is being done to add earlier reports.
Prior to 2018, Individual legislators made selected reports available. Check OpenCRS and UNT Digital Library: Congressional Research Service Reports for copies of these reports organized by topic areas.

This link allows you to search GAO reports, testimonies, and the full web site. As an investigative arm for Congress, GAO monitors compliance and accountability within government agencies, industry and business, and the public sector.

Data.gov provides access through a searchable catalog to U.S. government data. The broad range of topic areas reflects the mandate of U.S. government agencies to capture data in their varied areas of responsibility.

Find demographic, social and economic data compiled by the U. S. Census Bureau. Includes tables, maps and data visualizations.

Contains more than 37,000 annual time series of quantitative historical information covering population, work and welfare, economic structure and performance, governance, and international relations. Covers the colonial period to the present.

The official source for population and economic statistics for the state.

PolicyMap includes a range of indicators from the census tract level through the state level about communities. The ability to combine income and education levels along with demographic and quality of life measures allows for identification and interpretations of neighborhoods.

Includes statistics about Congressional members, often across time. Topics treated include House and Senate seats that changed party and districts with a racial or ethnic minority representative or a “majority-minority” population. The latest volume available online covers 2015-16. Volumes published in 1988 through 2004 are available in print copies in the Tripod catalog.

This statistical study is sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute. It was first done in 1980 and is regularly updated online. The authors track the changing makeup of Congress through history and across several dimensions, such as region, party, occupation, religion, committee assignments, staff size, and political stances. They document trends in critical areas such as voter turnout, ticket splitting, incumbency and turnover, margin of victory and polarization. The authors, acknowledged experts in campaign finance, provide detailed information on candidate, party, and PAC spending.