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Social Work

Research guide for social work.

Statistics vs Datasets

Statistics are useful for social work practice because they provide information about social issues. Look for statistics on this guide if you need information/numbers about a topic. If you need raw numbers to download and analyze yourself, use the datasets boxes below. 

Best Bets for Finding Statistics

Best Bets for Finding Datasets

If you need datasets on a topic, search the following three resources:

How to Search for Open/free Datasets

Google Web Search

Include your topic keywords, along with the word dataset.

Example: juvenile recidivism dataset

Tip: If the word dataset does not help, try the phrase raw data.

Datasets for Social Welfare

Datasets from these sources are in a downloadable format such as a spreadsheet (.xls, xlsx, or .csv). 

Datasets about Children & Youth

Social Science Dataset Examples

Data Visualization Info