Data and Statistics for Middle East Studies

Contents:

• Country Information
• International statistics and data by country
• United States statistics and data

Brief Country Information (including statistics)

• CIA Word Factbook
  Very brief, frequently cited.
• Britannica Online (Carleton Only)
  Highly respected and reliable; online version includes a section called "World Data" that contains a wide range of country statistics, allows comparisons of user-selected countries, and has ranking tables (e.g., top ten Asian countries ranked by Internet users per 1000 population).
• Political Handbook of the World (Carleton Only)
  Includes governance information and election results.
• Europa World Yearbook (link to Bridge)
  Print only; highly reliable and most up-to-date of these sources listed here.

International Statistics at the State/Country Level

Compendia Covering Multiple Topics

• World Resources Institute's EarthTrends Database
• UN Common Data Base
• World Bank's World Development Indicators (Carleton Only)
• OECD Fact Book 2007

Country Statistical Agencies

These three web sites in combination provide a comprehensive listing of government statistical agencies

• Country Statistical Agencies (Bureau of the Census)
• Foreign Government Data Sources (University of Michigan Documents Center)
• Official Web Sites of National Governments (Northwestern University Government Geographical Information and Data Services Department)

Other Sources of International Data and Statistics

• Data sets from ICPSR, for example (Carleton Only):
  
  • Middle East Political Events Data, 1979-1995
  • Middle East Event/Interaction Data, 1949-1969
  • United Nations Mideast Debate Study, 1953-1965
  • Worldviews 2002: American and European Public Opinion on Foreign Policy
  • More: browse by subject "middle east"
• Religion Data from ARDA (Association of Religion Data Archives)
  
  • Statistics from multiple sources about Western Asia
  • National Profiles
• UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia
• Arab Monetary Fund

United States

Arab American Demographics
Compiled by the Arab American Institute

iPOLL Databank from the Roper Center (Carleton Only)
Public opinion data from the Roper Center. Search by keyword and view survey questions and their results or download survey data in ASCII or SPSS portable format for analysis.

Census Factfinder
Access statistics from Census surveys including the Summary File 4 from the 1990 and 2000 decennial census and the American Community Survey

• Summary File 4 data allows one to view and download statistics by ancestry group. Select Quick Tables or Quick Table, "nation" as geography, choose a table, then, when prompted for Race or Ethnic Groups, find the tab labeled "Ethnic Groups" to limit to householders claiming Arab ancestry.

The Association of Religion Data Archives
The ARDA is an extremely easy to use web site that collects data about religion in the United States and internationally. Data are drawn from the Census, major surveys and indexes and opinion polls.

General Social Survey: 1972-2006 Cumulative File
View frequencies and basic cross-tabulations of variables online or create a subset of the dataset for analysis with statistical software.