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Secondary Research: Statistics and Data

Open data collections

The following provide open-access (freely available) research datasets.  Note:  "open access" does not necessarily mean that all the data are available for any type of use.  You will likely find that the data have been made available by means of some sort of licence, such as Creative Commons - which detail exactly what uses are permitted or not.  Most licences also include a citation requirement. 

Make sure to read any licence thoroughly before downloading and using any open-access dataset.

 

Health Data

 

  • BC Community Health Data: This site was developed and is maintained by the Population and Public Health Surveillance team (part of Data & Analytic Services) at the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) to provide openly available community health profiles - both at the municipality level and community health service area (e.g., health authorities) level.

     
  • Health Canada Open Data: Openly available datasets in .csv and other formats on a wide range of topics including post-secondary students' reported alcohol and drug use; indoor air quality; diet/food intake data; radon in homes and much more.

     
  • Healthdata.gov: from the US Dept of Health & Human Services, this site provides datasets (and more!) on a vast array of of topics, including Covid-19, vaccinations, addictions, access to parks, activities of daily living and much more.  To filter by subject, click the tags menu.

     
  • Open Health Data: European  Union: from the official portal for European data, this site provides datasets on a vast array of health topics.  You can limit by country, by clicking the Provenance menu.

 

 

Open data from federal governments:

 

 

 

Google

 

  • Google Dataset search:  This is not a repository, but a search engine for data repositories. 

     
    • At present this tool is optimized for repositories that use "schema.org and similar standards to describe their datasets."
       
    • Datasets found through this search engine are subject to the access restrictions and/or licence terms set out by the repositories that host them. 
       
    • Using the search engine:  Check out Google's Dataset Search Quick Start Guide.

 

Research Institutes / Not-for-profits

 

Center for Global Development (Dataverse platform): The Centre "is an independent, nonpartisan "think-and-do tank" based in Washington, DC and London that works to reduce global poverty and improve lives through innovative economic research."  Research focusses on reducing global poverty through sustainable development, financial inclusion, gender equity, migration, education and more.

 

Humanitarian Data Exchange(HDX): HDX "is an open platform for sharing data across crises and organisations.... to make humanitarian data easy to find and use for analysis....HDX is managed by OCHA's Centre for Humanitarian Data, which is located in The Hague, the Netherlands. OCHA is part of the United Nations Secretariat."
 

Pew Research Centre Datasets: "Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world."  It's most famous for its public opinion polls on a wide variety of socio-economic topics.  You must register for an account to download datasets.

 

Government Data with Access Restrictions

The following are data collections generated / provided by a government authority in Canada.  These may also have some type of access restriction, e.g., may only be accessible after a certain amount of time has passed, aka an "embargo," or limited to certain types of users, such as researchers at post-secondary institutions.  Some of these collections may include a mix of openly available and restricted datasets.
 

  • Some data may not be free, even for researchers, which you should consider when making any grant applications.  
     

Make sure to carefully read all "permitted uses" and/or "access restrictions" documentation before making use of anyone else's datasets.

 

CANADA

 

 

The BC Data Catalogue includes many datasets on a wide variety of provincial topics, including historical drought levels, surgical procedure wait times, small business profiles, a bee survey and much more. 

 

  • Some datasets are openly available, provided you agree to the Open Government Licence - British Columbia licence terms.  To find open data, click the "Public" button in the Download Permissions menu. 
     
  • Other collections are access-restricted and require written permission to download / reproduce the data.  Read the information page for each collection carefully to see ensure that "downloadable" access will be permitted. 
     

Health Data Platform BC: Data topics include chronic disease registry, COVID-19 Hospitalization and Critical Care Reports; Medical Imaging Wait Times (MIWT); Surgical Wait Times (SWT) and much more.
 

 

Data Liberation Initiative (DLI) - Statistics Canada:

 

  • Public Use Microdata Files (PUMF): provides "access to all anonymized and non-aggregated data, which is available through Statistics Canada's Electronic File Transfer Service (EFT) and an Internet Protocol (IP) restricted online database, Rich Data Services, with an easy-to-use discoverability tool."
     
    • PUMF microdata are available for many of StatsCan's large-scale surveys including the Labour Force Survey, Canadian Internet Use, Canadian Income Survey, General Social Survey and more. 
       
    • Microdata from the Census of Population are also available
       
    • Much of the collection is freely available to the public and can be immediately downloaded as a zip file. However, some may only be accessed through the DLI EFTS service. Current Douglas College employees and students can email rdm @ douglascollege.ca (no spaces) to request access to any PUMF file noted as only being available via EFTS.  
       
    • NOTE:  anyone wanting to use these data will need to own and be experienced in using "data manipulation packages (or software) such as SAS, SPSS or Stata.

 

Canada's Research-Data Repositories

National repositories

 

FRDR: The Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR) is a multidisciplinary, bilingual data repository that is freely available to researchers working at any Canadian institution eligible for funding from the Tri-Agencies - which includes Douglas College. 
 

 

Borealis is a bilingual, multidisciplinary, secure, Canadian research data repository, supported by academic libraries and research institutions across Canada.

 

  • You can search, browse or download unrestricted data without needing an account, by using Lunaris, Canada’s national research data discovery service, and/or Google Dataset Search.

 

ODESI: "is a Canadian social science data repository and online exploration and analysis tool. It contains 5,700+ datasets curated by academic libraries in Canada."  A particular strength is its collection of public opinion datasets.

Finding International / Subject-based Repositories

Curated Registries: International Repositories & Repository Registries

 

Canadian researchers are not obligated to deposit their research data in one of the Canadian national repositories.  Depending on the context, it may be more appropriate to deposit in a discipline-specific repository.   The following are great resources to check out.