Finding the right dataset can be hard, especially because data is created and published in so many different ways. The links below provide some options for finding data in your research. For more help in finding data, take a look at University of Michigan's Guide for strategies and resources for finding data across the social sciences, including opinion surveys.

Search tip: Some library databases allow you to limit your search results to those where the accompanying data are also available. 

Certain software products are available for free or at low cost to SSU students, including Stata and IBM SPSS Statistics. This guide from Information Technology will give you instructions on how to access these tools. 

R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS. 

In 2013, the Office of Science and Technology Policy mandated that “the direct results of federally funded scientific research are made available to and useful for the public, industry, and the scientific community,” including peer-reviewed publications and digital data.

Federal agencies with more than $100 million in research and development expenditures would need to develop a public access plan, of which one element must be “ [to] ensure that all extramural researchers receiving Federal grants and contracts…develop data management plans.”

Note that some federal funding agencies were already asking for data management plans (DMPs) before the 2013 memorandum; for example, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has required DMPs since 2011, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has required data sharing from projects with greater than $500,000 in annual costs since 2003.

Many scholarly journals now require authors to submit data along with manuscripts when seeking publication, and often these data are available along with the published article. 

DMPTool is a free, open-source, online application that helps researchers create data management plans. 

Data management plans help answer questions such as: 

• What kind of data will the research produce, and how it will be organized & stored during the project's lifetime?
• How will the data be documented, so that people not affiliated with the project can understand the dataset?
• How can people not affiliated with the project ultimately access the research data (with special attention to intellectual property, privacy and embargo constraints)?
• How can people not affiliated with the project use the data (e.g. create derivatives, etc.)?
• How will the data be preserved and/or archived once the project is complete?

Remember, all funding agencies have different DMP requirement, which will be listed in their grant application instructions.