LibGuides: Research Data: Finding Data

Finding Data

There are plenty of existing datasets that are available for researchers and students to use in their own projects.

Many of these, like government data, are freely available for anyone to use.

BCIT Library also provides access to certain datasets that you may find useful.

What is Open Data?

Open Data is data that has been made available under a specific licence for others to freely use in their own research and projects. It might be from a researcher, a government body, or another organization. Open Data covers everything from maps to computer code to population statistics. On this page we've linked to some Open Data sources you may find useful.

Government Data

BC Stats
British Columbia statistics on business, economics, the environment, demographics, education, health and more.
DataBC
DataBC encourages and enables the strategic management and sharing of data across the government enterprise and with the public. It is responsible for the B.C. Data Catalogue, the Open Data initiative and the B.C. Spatial Data Infrastructure and associated products and services.

Canada Open Government
Data from various branches of the Canadian government. Includes financial, agricultural, ecological data, and more.
Metro Vancouver Open Data Catalogue
Statistics Canada
Canada's national statistical agency. Provides census and survey data on population, resources, economy, society and culture.

Statistics Canada has just released a new resource for students: the 2021 Census Postsecondary Research Kit. This user-friendly guide explains what kinds of data students will find through StatsCan, examples of census data being used in research, links to Census resources and how to cite StatsCan products using APA! There's also an even more in-depth PDF guide!

Many municipalities make open data available. To find these data sets, search open data and the name of the municipality. A few examples are City of Vancouver Open Data Portal and Burnaby's Open Data Portal.

Other Datasets

ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research)
ICPSR maintains a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. It hosts 21 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.

Statista
Find statistics, consumer survey results and industry studies from over 18000 sources on over 60000 topics.
CARDonline
Canadian advertising rates and data.
Patty's Toxicology
Presents comprehensive toxicological data for industrial compounds from metals to synthetic polymers.
Market Share Reporter
Market Share Reporter compiles data on companies, brands and products worldwide from over 1,000 American sources.
SimplyAnalytics (SimplyMap) This link opens in a new window
Create thematic maps and reports using demographic, business, and marketing data.
You can "sign in as guest".
AXN Online Fact Book
A resource for revenue data on airports in North America.

Note: This database can only be accessed via the Onelog software that is installed in the Chrome browser on BCIT computers. To install Onelog on your personal device(s), see this guide.
Business in Vancouver : Datatables
Topics covered include economy, environment & sustainability, forestry & fisheries, hospitality & tourism, human resources, law & politics, media & marketing, mining & energy, real estate, retail & manufacturing, sports & leisure and technology.

Kaggle
Open database of code and datasets.
Canadian Institute for Health Information
Collects comparable, pan-Canadian data on different aspects of the health system.

Vividata on Telmar
Detailed information on Canadian consumers spending, activities and characteristics. This version of allows users to access Vividata as well as Canadian Census data, and to cross-tabulate, create visualizations and heat maps.

Note: This database can only be accessed via the Onelog software that is installed in the Chrome browser on BCIT computers. To install Onelog on your personal device(s), see this guide.

TRIM & ICIS Data

BCIT Library provides students and researchers access to several GIS datasets, that due to licence restrictions must be requested through the Data Librarian.

Integrated Cadastral Information Society (ICIS)
Terrain Resource Information Management (TRIM)

Check out the ICIS & TRIM Data page for more information on this data and how to access it.

BC Assessment Data

BCIT currently makes BC Assessment Data available to researchers. If you're interested in accessing this data, please contact us.

The data available includes:

International Data

World Bank Open Data (1960- )
Financial, business, health, economic and human development statistics from over 200 countries.

WHO (World Health Organization) Open data repository
UN Data
UNICEF Data
Open Data Monitor
European data.
Dataverse Network
Data.gov
Data provided by the US federal government and agencies.