Trusted Public Data Sources
If you’re unable to find the data you need through our raw and analyzed data, use this page to access trusted public data sources for your data projects with the links below. We’ve also included some hints and tips to help you use the data.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the great resources available!
General tips and tricks to find data:
Report Sources: When reading reports or research papers, pay attention to the data sources cited within them. Authors reference the datasets they used, and these can lead you to open data sources. Look for footnotes, references, or acknowledgments sections where such information may be mentioned.
Google Searches: Utilize search engines like Google to find open data sources. Use relevant keywords related to the type of data you are looking for, such as "Connecticut Education Data."
CTData Helpline: If you continue to struggle to find the data you need, you can email info@ctdata.org, which will connect you with a CTData staff member who can help connect you to data sources.
Want to learn more about using small population data or about margins of error? Visit our blog post for the Community of Practice we held on this topic: Zooming In: Using Small Group and Population Data
Table of Contents
Click on the following links to go to the desired section of this page.
Federal Data, Executive Branch
Connecticut State and Municipal Government Data
Federal Data, Executive Branch
Federal Departmental Data
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC)
Hint: If you don’t know the table that you need, review the list of topics on Census Reporter (scroll all the way down this home page) to find the table where your data is located.
Geographies - Standard Hierarchy of Census Geographic Entities - Our towns are called “County Subdivisions” (on left-hand side of graphic). Counties are called “county equivalents”. Learn more in our blog post using first release of County Equivalent data.
American Community Survey Information Guide (brief, helpful read)
Equity in Data Community of Practice: Microdata session
U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)
U.S. Department of Education (E.D.); National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
PLACES: Local Data for Better Health. “PLACES provides model-based population-level analysis and community estimates to all counties, places (incorporated and census designated places), census tracts, and ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) across the United States.” The website has interactive maps that you could screenshot for reports or grant applications.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS); Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) - provides datasets that include data from the American Housing Survey, median family incomes and income limits, as well as microdata from research initiatives on topics such as housing discrimination, the HUD-insured multifamily housing stock, and the public housing population.
U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ); Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)
U.S. Department of Labor (DOL); Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
U.S. Department of State (DOS)
U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT); Bureau of Transportation Statistics
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.)
U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI)
Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Federal Financial Insititutions Examination Council
Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA)
Connecticut State and Municipal Government Data
Connecticut’s Open Data Portal: data.ct.gov; Open Data Initiative, the state’s open data portal, which contains data from state agencies in several subject areas
Resource: CTData’s Geospatial Data Tools, which are files of geography crosswalks. These resources help you “map” locations to one another. For example, you think of your region in town names but you find a data source that only uses census tracts.
CTData Collaborative: CTData.org; Census State Data Center; Data by Topic (state census data); Data Projects; C.T. Business Data
Connecticut Department of Children and Families Data Dashboards
Connecticut Department of Public Health Research and Data and Statistics and Research
Connecticut Department of Education Data portal: EdSight
Connecticut Department of Labor Data Tools
Connecticut Council of Governments (COG) Data Portals
Connecticut Cities Open Data:
Norwich (Police Department Open Data Portal)
City GIS Data Only
Independent and Academic Research Data
National Opinion Research Center (NORC) General Social Survey - Users can search attitude and opinion data, dating back to 1972.
Annie E. Casey Kids Count Project
Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA) - national education data
Connecticut Housing Finance Authority – Town level housing data.
Health Equity Solutions - reports on focus group and community conversations
Data Visualization Sources
➔ Policy Map: Easy to use online-mapping tools with demographic data
➔ Social Explorer: Visualization tool that provides powerful mapping, using demographic data.
➔ Data USA: Visualization of federal government public data
➔ Measure of America: This tool designed by the Social Science Research Council provides users with a sense of equity and opportunity.
➔ FRED Economic time series data by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis