Subject Guides: International Relations: Data

Frequently Used Data Sources

Country Data

UN Data Find profiles and data on the economy, population, and other areas of nations across the globe.
IMF International Financial Statistics Access data on economic indicators over time for countries throughout the world.

Europa World Plus This link opens in a new window Europa World Plus is the online equivalent of paper Europa Yearbook, a mainstay at the Social Sciences/Education Reference Desk; a country-by-country listing with elections, economic, and other infrastructure data;

Microdata & Survey Data

IPUMS Microdata from government surveys that is easy to navigate, sort, and download. Topics include economics, health, higher education, and time use.
World Values Survey Includes questions religious views for individuals from countries throughout the world, 1981-present.

Public Opinion Poll Data

Gallup Poll and Archive This link opens in a new window This is the official Gallup Poll site, conducted by the Gallup organization, and which includes a variety of polling data but not their entire poll archive. May contain selected political polls or popularity/approval ratings.
Roper Center iPoll This link opens in a new window Search and download public opinion poll data including rich demographic data for comparison and analysis.

Pew Research Center Create a free account to download survey data on opinions, values and demographics, including religion.

Not sure where to start?

Try Google's Dataset Search
Browse topics in a large repository like UN Data
Search Google for data from the government, a great source for many different topics. Just add your topic keywords to the beginning of the search below:

Using Data

Resources for learning to use Stata.

Find resources for cleaning, analyzing, managing & citing data in the Data Guide.

Or try visualizing text data from major news sources using TDM Studio.

Subject-Specific Data Sources

Data sources for specific subjects related to your research question. Look for the International box for resources relevant to international relations research.

Business: Includes companies, finance, industry, marketing, real estate, and supply chain.
Economy: Includes indicators, labor force, population, and trade.
Education: Includes demographics, finances, outcomes, rankings, and scores.
Energy & Environment: Includes agriculture, earth science, pollution, and weather.
Family & Society: Includes attitudes, behaviors, census, demographic, religion, and time use.
Government & Politics: Includes diplomacy, elections, finance, justice, and political parties.
Health & Medicine: Includes access, finance, health factors and outcomes, and hospitals.
Religion & Family History: Includes historic demographics, world religions, and wellness.
Other: Includes machine learning, sports, technology, and transportation.
Ready to Use: Datasets that are already cleaned, reformatted, and ready to analyze.

Search Strategies

Government Websites: use a Google domain search (e.g. site:.gov) to limit results to government sources, which are an abundant source for data.

Country Websites: for international data search country specific websites using a Google domain search (e.g. site:.gov.uk).

Professional Organizations, Non-profits, or Research Groups: often these types of groups have a special interest in gathering and sharing data. Try adding terms to your search like "association", "profession", "advocacy", "non-profit", or "research".

Articles: look for where articles or reports on your topic obtained data. Is the data is available for free or purchase, or would it need to be collected on your own?

Browse: find what is available and refine your topic idea by looking through available data in a large repository like UN Data or Library Databases with Data.