Eight Data Sources You Want to Use

Photo by George P. Macklin (CC BY-SA 2.0)

by Linda Horsta
People are tired of he-said-she-said stories that overwhelm the web. Add a bit of data-driven arguments and it will make your story more credible. Moreover, any data journalist you talk to will tell you about the unrealized potential of publicly available data sets. Here, we have collected a list of eight publicly available databases that provide country-specific data on topics like economy, demographics, education, science and technology, social development and many more.

The World Factbook

It’s the Central Intelligence Agency’s repository of worldwide statistics. Just search for a specific country, or global information if that’s what you’re looking for. You’ll find a good  overview of the country in several fields (history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, transnational issues, etc…). It provides rich data and even allows you to compare regions. If you want to create your own “Fun with Flags” use the section The Flags of the World.

Eurostat

You may be interested in statistical information about Europe even if you are not from there. This database contains information about all countries in the European Union and a few other. Eurostat offers general and regional statistics on economy and finance, population and social conditions, industry trade and services, agriculture and fisheries, international trade, transport, environment and energy, science and technology. As there’s a lot of information, we recommend you to look through the guided information in Statistics Explained. There’s also a nice interactive tool to play with:  “Young Europeans”. It provides access to all Eurostat data on youth and let’s you compare youngsters to each other. For example, in the United Kingdom, the penetration and adoption of Internet among men and women aged 23 is very similar – more than 87% of youngsters in the UK use the Internet every day.

UNESCO Institute for Statistics

As an international organization, UNESCO offers cross-nationally comparable statistics on education, science and technology, culture, and communication for more than 200 countries and territories. For instance, you can find interesting information about the roles of gender. This article, Women in Science, might provide some inspiration for your next story.

The World Bank

The World Bank provides worldwide statistics about development in different countries. It is a good source for data for various topics like agriculture & rural development, health, aid effectiveness, infrastructure, climate change, poverty, economy & growth, education, science & technology, private sector, public sector, social development, financial sector, trade, etc. The Economy & Growth section provides data about economic growth, GDP, global consumption, and world development. In our opinion, this is the best source for worldwide economic data.

Nation Master

A tool that makes international statistics easy to compare. It lets you compare any two countries you choose, or search information on various topics (economy, crime, people, health, media, geography, education, cost of living, and energy stats). This site provides some great tools to help you find inspiration for your next piece of content: choose one of the ‘Trending now’ articles or choose a topic from ‘Top stats’. This is a great resource for when you’re in a hurry because of it’s amazingly easy-to-use interface.

Data.gov

This is the central repository for U.S. Government data. It provides access to national statistics collected and distributed through their open data program. Topics listed give insight into agriculture, business, climate, consumers, ecosystems, education, science & research, energy, finance, health, manufacturing, ocean, public safety, and local government statistics in the USA. Although it is a government-supported site, it includes many independent data sources. Here’s a list of organizations that provide statistics for this database.

IFDO

The International Federation of Data Organizations for Social Science (IFDO) has brought together many organizations interested in social sciences. This page enlists the Member Organizations, that collaborate in the project providing data from numerous surveys conducted in 30 different countries. Some data is available only in local languages, but it’s still worth taking a look at this resource.

OSDC

Open Science Data Club (OSDC) is another example of scientific information brought to us in a modern way. It is meant for scientific researchers to find the information they need, and for scientists to publish their discoveries. If you’re interested, or are working in science related fields, the Public Data section provides some other really interesting information on topics such as human genetic variation. You can even find the text of over 42’000 free ebooks through Project Gutenberg.

Now that you know where to get data from, you might want to learn how to work with it. Excel has many easy-to-use functions you might not know yet, so sign up for our webinar on Thursday, April 30.  Steve Doig, Professor and Knight Chair in Journalism will demonstrate some simple but powerful functions in Excel. Then Andrew from Infogram will turn the results from his data analysis into an engaging infographic. You can register for the webinar here.
Did you find the information you needed to create impactful data-driven stories? Hopefully we’ve inspired you to further explore the world of data.