In this article, we will introduce some national data source. You may face the situation of having the research questions, but not the data source. In this case, a secondary use of the current available data source would be better idea. Someone already take the effort to collect the data with the appropriate questionable/instruments. The only left thing for you to do, is to link the right data source with your research.
National available data source is amazing by its generalizability and rich data source. From the website of United Nations Statistics Devision: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/inter-natlinks/sd_natstat.asp, the available data source for the US as,
you can read here for detail about the available data within US, at national level statistics, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/Default.htm
Within California:
There are some very good data source too, if you don't need the national data level. OSHPD (website:
http://www.oshpd.ca.gov/) usually provides a lot of data.
Here is some data provided by California State of Public Health (website: http://www.cdph.ca.gov/data/statistics/Pages/default.aspx).
RAND has some statistics about California too (website: http://ca.rand.org/stats/statistics.html)
Which data source is best for you depends on your research questions. Sometimes, there are no available data source that include all the variables you would like. In such case, you will need to consider taking the effort to collect data yourself, which is really time consuming and can be very expensive. You may sometimes balance between your exact research questions or optimal data source.
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