Finding Statistics: Tips

When approaching new databases, web sites, or other sources of information, there are several techniques described below that can increase your success in finding information.

Frame a question. Think about what it is that you want and try to frame it in the form of a question. The question could be very broad or very specific. For example: What is the death rate among adolescents? (broader) How many children witnessed a murder in the New Haven, CT in 1999? (specific)
Broad vs. narrow. If your search question is very specific, then you probably want to start your search in the journal literature or in newspapers. If your search question is very broad, then you probably want to begin with books, bibliographies, and major web sites focusing on statistical information on children.
Prioritize concepts. Identify the most important concepts in your question. Be prepared to broaden your question (because the data may not exist). In other words, if you’re looking for how many children have witnessed a murder in New Haven, CT, can you be satisfied by looking for children witnessing murder in: another city the same size as New Haven Connecticut New England the United States children witnessing shootings in Connecticut children witnessing shootings in New England.
Proprietary vs. free. One of the biggest fallacies about the web is that all information is free. Without a doubt, most of the information on the web is freely available but some information is not. In fact, many databases are proprietary, such as PsycINFO and Social Work Abstracts, and there will be costs involved. If you encounter a database or resource on the Web that ultimately wants to charge you for use, contact your local public, hospital or academic library, whichever one you are affiliated with. Frequently, libraries pay for their patrons to be able to use these resources and even if they don’t, the reference librarian can probably give you some hints about local resources available to you.
Free resources. Two major, freely available resources for the subject of violence and children are MEDLINE, an excellent source for journal articles covering the medical, health, and mental health aspects of violence and children, and ERIC, a source for education and school information. Other excellent free sources of statistical information are government sites, non-profit organizations like UNICEF or Zero to Three, and organizations and associations.
Publishers' websites. Some databases include links to journal articles, but when you click on the link expecting to get to the full-text you are asked for a credit card number. Publishers, who are in business to make money, will not give away information for free. Again, try your local public, hospital or academic library.
Controlled vocabulary vs. keyword searching. When you approach a new database or resource, it’s good to check whether it is based on a controlled vocabulary. Controlled vocabularies (a.k.a. subject headings, thesaurus) allow you to find the correct term to use to search for a particular concept. For example, when looking for articles on children, do you use the word ‘child’ or the word ‘children’; do you use the word ‘teenager’ or the word ‘adolescent’? All the articles that talk about the concept of being a ‘teenager’ or a ‘youth’ or ‘young adult’ might be indexed to the term ‘adolescent’ making it much easier to locate all the articles about that particular age group. Types of databases that use controlled vocabularies are library catalogs and databases such as MEDLINE, PsycINFO, ERIC.
With keyword searching, you type in a word or phrase and the system looks for exactly what you type. It is a very powerful way to search but there are pitfalls: variations in word endings, and the use of different vocabulary to describe the same concept. Web search engines, such as Google or Hot Bot, are based on keyword searching and most proprietary databases allow some form of keyword searching.
Truncation/wildcard. Truncation solves the problem of variation in word endings. For example, adolescen? retrieves adolescent, adolescents, adolescence; statist? retrieves statistic, statistics, statistical, statistically. Check out what the truncation symbol is for the search engine by examining the help screens. Common symbols are: ? $ #
Boolean/positional operators. Boolean and Positional operators allow you to combine keywords or sets of keywords, and to do phrase searching. And, Or, and Not are Boolean operators. ‘And’ finds the intersection of sets; ‘Or’ finds either or all sets; ‘Not’ eliminates a set. Positional operators can be ‘adjacency’, ‘same’, or ‘near’. These indicate the how close the words are to each other. Not all search engines support all operators. Web search engines usually look at phrases like ‘children exposed to violence’ and translate it into ‘children and exposed and violence’. If you want to force the search engine to search a phrase as a phrase, enclose the phrase in quotes “children exposed to violence”.
Check out the help screens. Whenever you are having trouble finding what you want or you think the search engine isn’t behaving the way you think it should, consult the help screens. They usually provide excellent tips for searching, along with clear examples.
Can you trust what you find? As with any information, maintain a healthy level of skepticism. Critically analyze the source.