Research Guides: Government Information Basics: Statistics

Who has it?

Statistics do not exist for everything: When looking for statistics it is important to ask yourself who is the information important to and who would collect the data? This will help you decide where to look for the data/statistics you need.

Example: A student is looking for the number of murders in Denver for the last 10 years.

Who has it? Who cares about it? The FBI, Colorado Bureau of Investigation, or The Denver Police Department are all good places to start.
Using site:gov and searching for Denver crime statistics, I find the Colorado Bureau of Investigations "Crime Report" page. It was the first page in my search.
By exploring the page I find that I can find each "agencies" report linked by the CBI.
I click "Denver" for each year and have my data.

Where to look

Quick Start: Like all Government Information finding the statistic you want will very depending on who collected the data and what kind of data you want. Again Google is going to be good place to start, but make sure you add statistics as a search term.

Tools

Statistical Abstract of the U.S.
Comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States.
Statistical Insight
Comprehensive index for local, state, national, and international statistics. Contains interdisciplinary data and reports, and indexes older statistical publications held on microfiche (1973-present).
Statista
Statista aggregates statistics and studies from market researchers, organizations, specialist publications, and government sources.
Data Planet Statistical Datasets
Repository of officially sourced statistical data with visualization, search, and analysis capabilities.