Data Catalog

This dataset was generated during a repeated cross-sectional national telephone survey of households, conducted as part of the evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Urban Health Initiative (UHI). UHI is a long-term effort to improve the health, safety, and well-being of children and youth in five economically distressed cities in the United States: Baltimore, MD, Detroit, MI, Oakland, CA, Philadelphia, PA, and Richmond, VA. The UHI Survey of Adults and Youth (SAY) included a variety of questions, asked of both parents and their 10-18 year old children, regarding children's health, safety, perceptions of neighborhoods and schools, family relations, quality of city services, and other issues. SAY surveyed 3 types of households -- households without children, households with children aged 0-9 years, and households with children aged 10-18 years -- in up to 14 geographic areas, including the 5 UHI program cities, 9 comparison cities demographically similar to the UHI cities, the suburban regions of these cities, the most populous 100 United States cities, and the rest of the country. There were 3 waves of SAY fielded during the course of the UHI project: during the 1998-1999, 2001-2002, and 2004-2005 school years. There is a separate data file for each wave, and each record contains all of the data for a given household.

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is the longest running longitudinal household survey in the world. The study began in 1968 with a nationally representative sample of over 18,000 individuals living in 5,000 families in the United States. Information on these individuals and their descendants has been collected continuously, including data covering employment, income, wealth, expenditures, health, marriage, childbearing, child development, philanthropy, education, and numerous other topics.

The American Community Survey (ACS) is an ongoing survey that provides vital information on a yearly basis about the United States and its people. Information from the survey generates data that help determine how more than $675 billion in federal and state funds are distributed each year. Social characteristics include education, marital status, relationships, fertility, grandparents, school enrollment, educational attainment, veteran status, disability status, place of birth, U.S. citizenship status, language spoke at home, and ancestry. Economic characteristics include income, employment status, occupation, commuting to work, industry, class of worker, and poverty. Housing characteristics include occupancy and structure, housing value and costs, rent, and utilities. Demographic characteristics include sex, age, and race.

This data collection documents all cases of military intervention across international boundaries by regular armed forces of independent states in the regions of Europe, the Americas (and Caribbean), Asia and the Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East/North Africa. Military interventions are defined operationally in this collection as the movement of regular troops or forces (airborne, seaborne, shelling, etc.) of one country into the territory or territorial waters of another country, or forceful military action by troops already stationed by one country inside another, in the context of some political issue or dispute. The study seeks to identify politically important actions which interpose a state directly into the conflict patterns occurring in another state, and which conceivably involve a breach of the sovereignty of the target state (albeit by invitation in some cases). The collection identifies intervener and target countries and specifies the starting and ending dates of the intervention. A series of potential interests in or motives for intervention are presented, including effects on the target's domestic disputes, foreign or domestic policies, and efforts to protect social factions in the target, to attack rebels in sanctuaries across borders ("hot pursuit"), to protect or enhance economic/resource interests, to protect military or diplomatic facilities, to save lives, or to affect regional power balances and strategic relations. Information is provided on the direction of the intervention, i.e., to support or oppose the target government, to support or oppose opposition groups in the target, or to support or oppose third-party governments or opposition groups. Other variables show the degree of prior intervention, the alliance or treaty relationship between intervener and target, prior colonial status, prior intervention, and measures of intervener and target power size. A series of intensity measures, such as battle-related casualties, is also included. For each type of incursion, by land, sea, or air, an ordinal scale of involvement is presented, ranging from minor engagement such as evacuation, to patrols, acts of intimidation, and actual firing, shelling, or bombing. Finally, contiguity information is provided to indicate both whether intervener and target are geographically contiguous, and whether the intervention was launched from contiguous territory.

This study evaluated advocacy services offered to battered women in Detroit, Michigan, and examined other aspects of coordinated community responses to domestic violence by focusing on women named as victims in police reports. Advocacy was defined as those services provided to support victims during the legal process or to enhance their safety. For the Preliminary Complaint Reports Data (Part 1), a random sample of preliminary complaint reports (PCRs), completed by police officers after they responded to domestic violence calls, were gathered, resulting in a sample of 1,057 incidents and victims. For Victim Advocacy Contact Data (Part 2), researchers obtained data from advocates' files about the services they provided to the 1,057 victims. For Case Disposition Data (Part 3), researchers conducted a computer search to determine the outcomes of the cases. They looked up each perpetrator from the list of 1,057 incidents, and determined whether there was a warrant for the focal incident, whether it turned into a prosecution, and the outcome. The Initial Victim Interview (Part 4) and Follow-Up Victim Interview Data (Part 5) were conducted from April 1998 to July 1999. During the same period that researchers were completing the second interviews, they also interviewed 23 women (Victim Comparison Group Interview Data, Part 6) from the list of 1,057 whom they had been unable to reach during the first interviews. They compared these 23 women to the 63 who had second interviews to determine if there were any differences in use of services, or views toward or participation in prosecution. Variables in Part 1 focus on whether alcohol and abuse were involved, previous incidents, the suspect's psychological aggressions and physical assaults, if a weapon was used, if the victim was hurt, if property was damaged, if the victim sought medical attention, and the severity of physical abuse or injury. Variables in Part 2 provide information on the role of the advocate, methods of contact, types of referrals made, and services provided. Variables in Part 3 include the type of charge, outcome of resolved case, why the case was dismissed, if applicable, and if the suspect was sentenced to probation, costs, confinement, no contact with the victim, a batterer program, or community service. [...]

The goal of this study was to investigate the influence of female parents on the sexual and contraceptive behavior of teenage daughters. The strategy for doing so was to examine patterns of communication about sex roles and sexual behavior between mothers and daughters in different types of families and to measure the impact of varying communication patterns on the sexual and contraceptive knowledge and behavior of daughters. Demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral data were collected from both mothers and daughters in Detroit, Michigan, in separate but simultaneous face-to-face interviews.

The National Survey of American Life (NSAL) is a study designed to explore racial and ethnic differences in mental disorders, psychological distress, and informal and formal service use from within the context of a variety of presumed risk and protective factors in the African-American and Afro-Caribbean populations of the United States as compared with White respondents living in the same communities. The NSAL is part of the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES) data collection.

Beginning in 2019, The Marshall Project/Slate began a large ongoing reporting project to survey the political views of incarcerated people in American prisons and jails. Responses are being collected on a rolling basis over several months; by March of 2020 over 8,000 had arrived from incarcerated people across the country. The raw survey data are cleaned, formatted, and anonymized.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Whose Heritage?” project has been gathering and mapping information on “public symbols of the Confederacy,” such as monuments, place names, official holidays, commemorative license plates, and municipal seals. For each of the 1,800+ entries, the project’s dataset indicates the type of monument/symbol, its location, sponsor, year dedicated, and (if applicable) year removed.

The Plug, a news site that focuses on the Black innovation economy, has been assembling a dataset of statements made by tech companies on racial justice, Black Lives Matter, and George Floyd. The dataset links to more than 200 statements so far and includes each company’s name, the timing of the statement, and other relevant context, such as the URL of their most recent diversity report and the percentage of employees and/or leaders who identify as Black.