Guides & Tutorials: Sociology: Find Data &amp; Statistics

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Data & Statistics

Look for data and statistics of social interests

Social Data and statistics may come from a wide range of sources such as governments, NGOs, international and/or public bodies in your interests. Please explore the NGOs listed in the Internet Resources chapter, some NGOs might share statistical findings in their websites, or through the publications such as blogs, newsletters or technical reports.

From the United Nations

United nations: Databases

From the World Bank:

From Hong Kong Government

Census and Statistics Department (C&SD)
Centre for Health: Statistics

Make good use of the following subscribed resources in the PolyU Library collection:

Education Statistics (EdStats)
The World Bank EdStats Query holds around 2,500 internationally comparable education indicators for access, progression, completion, literacy, teachers, population, and expenditures
OECD iLibrary
OECD iLibrary (formerly SourceOECD) is the online publications portal of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It provides full-text access to all the OECD printed books, reports, periodicals and statistics.
CEIC China Database
CEIC China Database includes data from 40 major government statistical agencies; over 40 prime industrial data issuing agencies; and over 1,000 reference publications
Browse Other Statistics Databases
Browse Other Statistics Databases in the PolyU Library collections

Please see the instructions of using some Statistical databases and online resources in the section below.

The examples are tourism related, as they are adopted from the Hotel and Tourism Management Library Guide (where you will find more statistical instructions). However, you can explore other topical interests similarly in the databases.

Statistical Databases and Online Resources

CEIC China Database extensively covers data and statistics form the government and industrial statistics agencies which provide you helpful data related to China's economics, tourism sector, and hotel sector.

You can explore the available data from examples below, or simply watch the Video Tutorials under the Help tab in the database.

Please note that the number of concurrent user of CEIC China Database is one only. This means that you may need to wait until the previous user quit the database if it is currently using by another user.

Below is an example to access information in CEIC:

Click on China Premium Database.
Select the topic you are interested in.
Drag and drop the information to the Line, Table, Area or Map sections in CEIC.
You can then view and download the information.

Click to see steps in screenshots

The Census and Statistics Department (C&SD) provides statistics covering various social and economic aspects of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Statistics - Browse by Statistical Subject

You can browse Hong Kong statistics by subjects with the steps below:

Visit the C&SD homepage.
Mouse-over Hong Kong Statistics on the sidebar.
Click on Browse by Statistical Subject.
You can then browse for the statistic, as well as relevant publications and tables.

Click to see steps in screenshots

Google Dataset Search is a user-friendly search engine for searching freely available data online. It was launched in September 2018 by Google, and has just been out of beta in January 2020.

You can access data from Google Dataset Search with the steps below:

Input keywords and conduct a search.
Apply proper filters to find the right data you are looking for.
You can then click on the link provided on the result page.

Click to see steps in screenshots

Mendeley Data allows you to discover research data uploaded by other researchers and upload your research data to make it citable by other researchers. It also indexes the following open research data repositories:

You can search datasets in Mendeley Data with the steps below:

Input keywords for searching.
Use the sidebar to refine the searching results.
Click on More Details to access the dataset.
You can then download the data via the button provided.
Remember to cite the data if you used it in your work.

Click to see steps in screenshots