S U B J E C T   G U I D E S  : BRIEF GUIDE TO STATISTICAL DATA

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Problems and pitfalls  
Data is produced by many different people and organisations for many differing purposes. Statistics are often not easy to find. For various reasons, mainly commercial confidentiality or sensitivity, some statistics are not publicly available. Other statistics may be available but need to be paid for.

Government policy and budgetary reasons often result in some statistical data being patchy - available for some years and not others, or produced for a short time then discontinued, or produced as a one off survey. Another problem is detail of data - often the older the data the more detailed the information

What kind of data? 
Some considerations and possible problems:
  • Recent: Is the most recent one to five years of data sufficient or is a long time series required to ensure sufficient observations for modeling? A short time series may be all there is available if the data is, for example, based on a one off or infrequent survey. This is common for product and industry information, market share data, and for some social data 
  • Time series: Is a time series of data  required: 40, 30, 20 ,10 years of data? Sometimes a long time series of data is not possible because of the date a particular survey began, for example the Household Labour Force survey in New Zealand began in 1985. Data may also not be available because of changes to national boundaries, establishment of new nations, or war disrupting the collection and dissemination of a nation's data. Consistent long time series data may be a problem if there have been methodological changes instituted eg, changes to the System of National Accounts, changes in currency eg the Euro, changing from  £ s to $s
  • Frequency: Is annual, quarterly, monthly or daily data required? Sometimes a long time series of data is not possible because of the date a particular frequency began to be published, for example quarterly GDP data for New Zealand began with the June 1977 quarter
  • Source: Does the data need to come from an official source such as a country's Statistical Office, Central Bank or Government Department, or an official agency such as the UN, World Bank or OECD? It may be that  data is reported in a newspaper article but the actual source is a commissioned report either available for a fee, or the whole report is not available because it has been produced for a client who wants to keep most of the findings confidential. Sometimes it is necessary to look in more than one place for data from the same survey ie New Zealand Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) data is not all publicly available from just one source, and is not all available as a consistent time series. Depending on the data variable required it may be necessary to look at the New Zealand Time series database, the INFOS database, and the Labour market statistics (in print and online). Some variable data may need to be purchased from Statistics New Zealand
  • Comparability: Do you want to compare one country's performance against another or group of countries? If time series data is required some issues to consider include the existence or not of a country/countries and changes to national borders (especially prior to 1990). and the inclusion of countries into the EU as a region

  • Updating data: If you are wanting to update data by another researcher already published in, for example, a working paper or journal article, has that researcher manipulated raw data from a number of sources to produce the data you want to update. If so, then you will need to identify the underlying data types so that you can do the calculations needed to produce comparable updated data

  • Regularity: Many longitudinal studies, panel data studies and income differential studies are based on data collected at 5 year or more intervals or are reliant on, for example, national statistical agencies running household surveys, many of which do not occur on a regular basis. Although you may want up-to-date data on these topics, it simply may not be possible to get anything more recent than that which is made available by agencies such as the World Bank (especially income differentials)

  • Timeliness of data: If data from a recent census is required how long after the census is taken is the data published, and is all the data released at once or is it released over a number of years. Health data is slow to be published - often there is a two to three year time lag. There is often a three year time lag in international comparative data, particularly for the social sciences. This can be explained by the cycles the data goes through: collected by a national statistical agency, passed on to an international agency, then reprocessed by that agency in an attempt to produce consistent and comparable data

  • Free or fee: Is the data likely to be freely available or is it only available for a fee. Salary packages, performance pay, and remuneration packages data usually has to be paid for. If data is fee-based, then is it worth paying if the data is needed for an undergraduate assignment

  • Is the type of data you want actually collected: Some data is simply not available because it is not collected, for example FDI by sector is not available for New Zealand because Statistics New Zealand do not collect that data, however other countries statistical offices do and that type of data will be available for those specific countries
Where is the data?  
Print 

Statistical information can be in either print form or, increasingly, in electronic form. The General Library has a fairly comprehensive collection of statistical data both in print and electronic format

  • Location
    The Statistics Collection is located on Level M of the General Library. Photocopiers are located nearby
     

  • Materials Collected
    Yearbooks, statistical bulletins, abstracts, etc published by national statistical offices or other government departments for most countries are collected.  Selected monographs which contain substantial statistical information but which are not published by a government or quasi-government organisation are also included
     

  • Arrangement
    S1 non governmental    , followed by the organisation abbreviation (EU, FAO, ILO, IMF, OECD, UN, WB)
    S2 National statistics, followed by the country abbreviation, followed by a code based on a subject keyword,
            eg.    S2/FJI  STAn  (Statistical news / Fiji Bureau of Statistics)
     

  • Borrowing
    All items are "Not to be borrowed"
     

  • Finding Material
    All material is catalogued on Voyager. In most cases it is easy to follow the logical arrangement on the shelves in order to find the required information source

Databases 
 The University of Auckland Library provides free access to the following two databases. The databases bring together numerous sources of statistical information.
  • NZSTATS : New Zealand Statistics Sources. This database provides access to internet, database and print sources for data specifically about New Zealand. Web links are arranged by subject
     
  • OFFSTATS : Official Statistics on the Web. This database provides access to free statistics from official sources on the web. Web links are arranged by country, region or subject

 
Databases for the University of Auckland community 
Many organisations now provide some of their data electronically. The Library subscribes to a number of these databases including:

Internet sites
Most of the major NGOs such as the United Nations, the Asian Development Bank, the IMF, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation and the OECD, make a variety of statistical data available on their websites. Often the data may be free selected tables from larger subscription datasets.

Country statistical offices and Government departments also have a variety of free data.

Internet searching is also a way to find data in research reports and commercial sites.

Some internet sites act as portals, linking through to a variety of other statistical sites, for example OFFSTATS, Economics data and text resources from Rutgers University Library, and Statistical resources on the web from the University of Michigan Documents Center.

Additional internet resources are listed on the Statistics & numeric data: internet links page

 Additional resources 
Books
Use Voyager to find books with statistical data.
  • Statistics is a subheading which can be added to many subject heading searches, for example::
    accidents traffic new zealand statistics    , or
         diabetes new zealand statistics

  • Use a Guided Keyword search. 
    In the     'search for' box, enter the topic required as well as the word statistics 
    In the 'search in'  box, select Subject headings
Newspapers and trade magazines
Newspapers and trade magazines can be an excellent source of data and comment. Particularly useful are the magazines from the grocery trade. New Zealand data trade magazines often include articles which use data from AC Neilsen's data scan.  Many government departments, researchers, research institutes, and NGOS issue media releases which are invariably reported in the local daily newspapers. The best way to find newspaper articles and which articles are in what magazines is to do a search through the two New Zealand databases on Library website:

For data other than a New Zealand context, the following databases are useful:

Specific data types 
Census
Every 5 years a census of population and dwellings is taken in New Zealand.  Census information is particularly valuable as it includes a count of every individual, unlike sample surveys which form the basis of most other Statistics New Zealand surveys. The Census gives demographic data, for example:
  • Where people live 
  • Ethnicity
  • Country of birth
  • Ages
  • Incomes
  • Languages spoken
  • Number of cars per household
  • Occupations
  • Employment and work status
  • Family and household composition

Between 1 and 2 years after a census is taken, results start to be published in print and electronic form. 
Please note there is no information from the Census about disposable income, cats or dogs, or household appliances

Printed results are shelved in the Statistics Collection on Level M at S2/NZ CEN. As well as the standard census results, census data often forms the basis for special publications. These have been published as the New Zealand now series and include comment, graphs, tables and maps. 

Statistics New Zealand has most of the census data free and fulltext on their website.  A brief online Household economic survey and Census tutorial is available

Market share data

Market share data is often difficult to find because of commercial confidentiality. 
Databases worth searching include:

The Global Market Information Database from Euromonitor gives access to information and statistics on consumer market sizes, brands, major market profiles, and market analysis. For example there are recent reports for New Zealand on softdrinks, cosmetics and toiletries, hot drinks, pet food, OTC healthcare, and wine

The Market Information Digest  from Anilines provides general trade and product category data for New Zealand. The information is mostly sourced from ACNeilsen SCANTRACK. General trade information includes the retail trade by broad category (store numbers, house brands, retailer profiles, with some data for Australia), and supermarket category trends. Product category information includes sales, segment of market, broad location of the market and the ranking of major brands

Checklist for finding statistics  
  • Make use of the statistical databases to which the Library subscribes
  • There are some useful publications in the print Statistics Collection on Level M. (yearbooks, specialist UN publications such as the Human Development Report). Often it will be necessary to look at the print equivalent of an electronic database to find detailed information on how for example data has been calculated or the source of the raw data - for example the International Financial Statistics from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
  • Journal and newspaper articles often include statistics - search a selection of databases on Library website for likely articles. (INNZ,  Newztext, ProQuest, Business Source Premier, Factiva)
  • Books often include tables of statistics - carry out a Guided keyword search on Voyager and include the word statistics in the search eg family zealand statistics
  • Working papers often include statistical data. Links to working paper collections may be included in Subject Guides pages.
  • You may need to look at a combination of sources, both print and electronic
  • There is a vast amount of data on the web

Data links 

Various links for building and downloading tables of data; locating international data archives; locating data on specific topics, and information about Auckland University's Statistics Collection is available via the Statistical & Numeric Data resources page
  

Comments and suggestions to: Gillian Ralph
 Last updated: 13 April, 2011
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