Finding Data & Statistics

Search Preparation

Brainstorming

Data Types

Consider types of data or statistics

• demographic/population
• marketing/sales
• business/industry
• discipline/topic
• opinion/poll
• GIS (geographic information systems)

Data Creators

Consider types of data and statistics creators

• academic researchers
• government analysts/agencies
• businesses (individual and/or aggregator)
• organizations (non-profit, for-profit, etc.)

Clarifying Questions

Ask questions to clarify source and availability

• How is the information disseminated?
• Who stores the data?
• How is access provided to the data?

Search Strategies

• Thesaurus — different ways of saying similar things
  • Example: data, data archive, statistics, surveys, polls, etc.
• Boolean terms — mix and match those terms
  • Example: AND, OR, NOT
• Site extension limiters — limit to specific site extensions
  • Example: .gov, .edu, .org

Result = "Willamette River" Oregon AND (data OR statistics) site:.gov