Library Services Subject guides - University of Kent

Statistical and Epidemiological Sources

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Print Resources

ALWAYS check the Library catalogue for exact details of item availability - these are only rough pointers to where things are on the shelves.

General text-books on applying statistical methods can often be found in the Mathematics section (mainly classmarks QA 276 - QA 278).

Books on interpreting statistical information for the social sciences can usually be found at classmark HA29, whilst those on interpreting official statistical information (e.g. government surveys etc.) can be found at HA 37.G7.

Books on applying and interpreting statistics in Psychology can be found at BF 38.5 - BF 39. Books on statistical methods for health and medicine can be found at RA 409, books on epidemiology can be found at RA 651 - RA 652.2.

Copies of official statistical surveys and epidemiological reports, such as Health Statistics Quarterly, Population Trends, the census, and morbidity or mortality statistics, are all kept in the British Government Publications Collection (BGPC) on the West wing of Level 3 in the Library. Again, always check the Library catalogue for full details.

Online Resources

Statistical Software

Available software:

Betty C. Jung's Statistical Software Sites

CAQDAS Networking Project - Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software Project: aims to provide practical support, training and information in the use of a range of software programs which have been designed to assist qualitative data analysis

The Impoverished Social Scientist's Guide to Free Statistical Software and Resources - created by Micah Altman

qsrinternational - web site of the market leading software provider for qualitative data analysis: products include Nud*ist, XSIGHT and NVIVO

SPSS - web site of the market leading product for analysis of quantitative data

STATA Statistical Software - manufacturers of the STATA software

Statistical Packages: Commercial and Shareware - from the Australian StatSci.org site, a valuable source of statistical science sources on the web

Statistical Packages: Free - ditto

Support and tutorials:

Excel training - see the University of Kent online suite of Online Activ office training resources, or book up on a student skills workshop or ECDL course

SPSS Tutorial - developed by DataStep (originally for a course run at California State University, Sacramento), the free step-by-step tutorial can be downloaded in .pdf format, and the accompanying data files by .ftp. A statistical selection guide to selecting data analysis models and statistical tests is also available

Statistical Guides and Tutorials

Ask Professor Mean - a question and answer tutorial explaining the meaning and use of statistical terms. Part of the excellent STATS (Steve's Attempt to Teach Statistics) site, featuring other tutorials

Concepts and Applications of Inferential Statistics - online textbook

Hyperstat Textbook - an in-depth textbook explaining how to use statistical techniques. Part of the Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics

The Internet Glossary of Statistical Terms - provides explanations of all the statistical and epidemiological terms you are likely to come across

Introductory Statistics: Concepts, Models and Applications - an online textbook with exercises by David W. Stockburger of the Psychology Department at Southwest Missouri State University

The Little Book of Statistical Practice - an online handbook written by G.E. Dallal, head of the Biostatistics Unit at Tufts University

Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics - links to simulations, tutorials, case studies and statistical tools developed by David M. Lane. Includes simulations and demonstrations of statistical procedures

StatSoft Electronic Statistics Textbook - a statistics teaching package developed by StatSoft. Includes a statistical glossary

STEPS (Statistical Education Through Problem Solving) - a set of downloadable (free) modules for teaching statistics in biology and psychology

Topics in Statistical Data Analysis: Revealing Facts from Data - developed by prof. Hossein Arsham of the University of Baltimore

Whichtest - online guide for clinical psychologists to selecting statistical tests

WISE (Web Interface for Statistics Education) - an online teaching package produced by Claremont Colleges in the US

X4L - SDiT (Survey Data in Teaching) - a set of teaching and learning materials that aim to teach data literacy at A-level and degree level. Makes use of data from the British Crime Survey to illustrate how social science data can be extracted from a dataset, and used in research, or applied to real life problems

Statistical Tools

Interactive Statistics Pages - a list of resources for performing statistical calculations put together by John C. Pezzullo, Associate Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Biostatistics at Georgetown University, in Washington, DC.

GeoConvert - a geographical translation service: place UK postcodes by geographical location or enumeration district using the postcode look-up directories. This is hosted by the Census Dissemination Unit at MIMAS. Access to UK HE researchers is via the UK Federation option - you will need to undergo an additional registration step for CDU services

Research Randomizer - this program uses a JavaScript random number generator to perform random sampling or assign participants to experimental conditions

SISA (Simple Interactive Statistical Analysis) - enter values and use the tools to perform specific statistical functions

Statistics Calculators - another list of free calculators suitable for many statistical processes

General Resources

National Statistics - website for the Government statistical body, National Statistics (formerly Office for National Statistics). It provides data, and includes a searchable database of National Statistics products. This allows you to find the correct source for the statistics you require (you then need to check the Library catalogue in order to see if we have the material).

See also their catalogue of online products

Eurostat - EU Statistics - a mostly free source of statistical information on all subjects produced by the EU Statistical Information Office

The UK Data Archive - a research resource hosted by the University of Essex. It allows people working in the HE sector to search for raw data from a wide range of important health, social science, and economic surveys. When you find the data you require, you can request that a copy be sent to you (on a floppy disk). It is free to UK Higher Education researchers (the only charge is for the cost of a disk plus the postage & packaging), although users must register before use. All resources are available via the catalogue. You need to register to access data - use the UK Federation login option

The UK National Digital Archive of Datasets - "NDAD preserves and provides access to computer datasets from UK government departments and agencies. The service is aimed at all those with an interest in records of 20th century government decision making and planning, including researchers, social historians."

It archives historic datasets from the DOH, Home Office, and National Statistics office amongst others. It also includes a brief administrative history of each Government department.

Health Care Statistics, Communicable Disease & Epidemiology

Guides & Tools:

EBM Toolbox - part of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine site, this page gives you a number of tools and advice for performing statistical calculations, such pre-test probabilities, numbers needed to treat (NNTs), confidence intervals and likelihood ratios

Epidemiology for the Uninitiated - an online BMJ textbook

Finding and using Health Statistics - an Online Study Guide - Developed by the US National Institutes for Health, this is a step-by-step t

utorial to finding, interpreting and using health data

Statistics at Square One - an online textbook from the BMJ Publishing Group, introducing how to use and understand statistics

Random Number Generator - use this tool to help you assign participants in your sample to different arms of a trial

Resources:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - US public health and epidemiological centre responsible for preventing the spread of infectious disease, environmental health, and health promotion

Use the CDC Wonder database to search for a wide variety of US reports and numeric public health data
See the data & statistics section of the web site for all the available datasets and statistical products
National Centre for Health Statistics - principal health statistics agency for the US
State and territorial data
A-Z of Statistical topics

Department of Health Statistics - health related statistical and epidemiological surveys and publications from the Department of Health. Use this page to access DOH information on the following areas:

Statistical work areas - collections or resources related to the following areas: public health, social care, health care, workforce, and expenditure
Recent/future publications - a list of publications
Hospital episode statistics - information on admitted patient care
Guidance & performance indicators - wating list times etc.
Health and personal social services - a selection of statistics from across a range of services such as residential care, child protection and home help

Department of Health Surveys page - access to published DOH surveys on a a variety of health issues, including the Health Survey for England

Global Alert and Response - a department of the World Health Organisation (WHO) dedicated to monitoring outbreaks of comunicable disease worldwide

Health and Care Statistics - a section of the National Statistics website dealing with the theme of health and care. It collates all National Statistics publications in this subject area

Health and personal social services - a selection of statistics from across a range of services such as residential care, child protection and home help

Health Protection Agency Infectious Diseases - data on the epidemiology of infectious diseases, replaces the Public Health Laboratory site

Health Statistics Quarterly - primary source of collated statistical information on trends in health. All downloadable as documents

Health Survey for England - results of the 2001 survey on the state of the nation's health. Looks at geographic and demographic (age, inequality, and ethnic background) factors

Mortality Statistics - series of statistical publications from the National Statistics office looking at the causes of death. Downloadable as documents:

Dh3 Mortality Statistics - General
Dh4 Mortality Statistics - Cause
DH3 Mortality Statistics - Childhood, infant and perinatal
DH4 Mortality Statistics - Injury and poisoning

POPLINE - bibliographic database of citations and abstracts to literature in the field of population, family planning, and related health issues

SEER, Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results - Source of information on cancer incidence and survival in the United States. Produced by the National Cancer Institute.

Statistical Publications - link to all the statistical publications produced by the Department of Health. Most publications relate to England unless stated otherwise. Use this page to find statistical bulletins by category (e.g. mental health, substance abuse etc.)

Weekly Epidemiological Record - distributed weekly by the WHO, it gives the most up-to-date epidemiological figures for infectious and communicable diseases worldwide

WHO Classification - WHO classification criteria for disease, disability and health: used for epidemiological reporting processes. Includes

ICD - international classification of diseases
ICF (International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health)

WHOSIS - the World Health organisation (WHO) Statistical Information System

Social Care, Social Science, & Socioeconomic Data & Statistics

Benefits Statistics - a collection of DWP documentation on social security statistics. All downloadable as documents. See also the Tabulation Tool for personally defined datasets

Crime and Justice Statistics - section of the National Statistics website dealing with the theme of crime and justice. It collates all National Statistics publications in this subject area

Drug Seizures Statistics -a collection of Home Office Research and Development statistics on drug seizures. Responisibility for keeping drug offender statistics has passed to the Ministry of Justice

Economic & Social Data Service - UK national data service that brings together four centres of expertise in data creation, preservation and use:

ESDS Government (large scale Government surveys)
ESDS International (sources of international datasets)
ESDS Qualidata (access to a range of qualitative datasets)
ESDS Longitudinal (supports a range of UK longitudinal data collections)

Focus on Ethnicity and Identity - ethnicity data providing information on the characteristics, lifestyles and experiences of ethnic groups in the UK. All downloadable as documents

Health and personal social services - a selection of statistics from across a range of services such as residential care, child protection and home help

Home Office Statistical Bulletins - the complete list of Home Office Statistical Bulletins published within the last 12 months. All downloadable as documents

Housing Statistics - from the Communities and Local Government website

Immigration and Asylum Statistics - Home Office statistics on immigration, asylum and nationality

International Database - the International Data Base (IDB) is a computerized data bank containing statistical tables of demographic, and socio-economic data for 227 countries and areas of the world

Ministry of Justice - collates offender and re-offender statistics

OECD Statistics Portal - browse down to the statistics section of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development website. Covers economic data on a wide range of topics

Social Inequalities - a special National Statistics report into poverty and social exclusion. Downloadable as a document (802 Kb)

Social Justice - section of the National Statistics website dealing with the themes of social exclusion, inequality, disability, gender and ethnicity

Social Trends - electronic issues of Social trends. Downloadable as documents

Social and Welfare Statistics - a section of the National Statistics website dealing with the theme of social and welfare trends. It collates all National Statistics publications in this subject area

Time Series Data - a data bank of time series from National Statistics economic & socio-economic releases

Population, Census, & Demographic Data & Statistics

Asylum Statistics - a collection of Home Office Research and Development statistics on Immigration and asylum

CASWEB - aggregate counts of persons and households for various geographical units taken from the UK Census 1991. Requires that you register yourself in order to use the service

Census 2001 - the National Statistics website allows access to key downloads of statistics from the 2001 Census. look under Get data

Census.ac.uk - portal to Census datasets for UK higher and further education. Requires that you register yourself in order to use the service. Services available include:

Census Dissemination Unit - hosted by MIMAS
Centre for Interaction Data Estimation and Research - data that relates to flows of people between places
Census Geography Data Unit (UKBORDERS) - digitised boundary datasets of the UK
Samples of Anonymised Records

CIA World Factbook - yes, this is produced by the US Central Intelligence Agency, and represents all sorts of data and information about countries around the world based on the best intelligence that the United States has at its command . . .

International Database - the International Data Base (IDB) is a computerized data bank containing statistical tables of demographic, and socio-economic data for 227 countries and areas of the world

Population Index - primary reference tool to the world's population literature. Provides a searchable and browsable database containing 46,035 abstracts of demographic literature published in Population Index in the period 1986-2000

POPLINE - bibliographic database of citations and abstracts to literature in the field of population, family planning, and related health issues

Population and Migration Statistics - a section of the National Statistics website dealing with the theme of population and migration trends. It collates all National Statistics publications in this subject area

Population Trends - primary source of collated statistical information on trends in population for the UK. All downloadable as documents

Region in Figures - downloadable by regional area as documents:

Regional Trends - source of official statistics for the Statistical Regions of the United Kingdom (ceased publication 2004). Downloadable as documents

UK Borders - provides digitised boundary datasets of the UK. NB you will need to register before you can use the service.

United Nations Statistics Division - general statistics compendiums (e.g. the Statistical Yearbook and World Statistics Pocketbook), plus collated statistical publications on international trade, national accounts, demography and population, social indicators, gender, industry, energy, environment, human settlements and disability

To report errors or make suggestions for this page:

Please e-mail Jason Harper

University of Kent