Research Guides: Biology: Bio 298

Refer to the Data Sources Recommended by Your Professor

Your professor will recommend raw data sources that you will use for your research.

This page contains several topics that have been done in the past as well currently. There is some overlap with faculty recommendations but not completely, so refer to the data sites from your professor.

Research Topic #1

Obesity and Nutrition Data Sources

Diet | The NHS Information Centre
Extensive annual spreadsheets on obesity and diet in the UK. "Bases" at the bottoms of the tables are the raw data. The spreadsheets have numerous tabs, so use the Chapter tabs at the beginning to browse to the data that you want.
Health Survey for England - 2009 trend tables | The NHS Information Centre
Population number estimate tables for obesity and underweight in the UK.
Home - KIDS COUNT Data Center
Data within or across states, tracks overweight/obesity, exercise, risky behavior, economic level and education, but not diet specifically
BRFSS- CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System
The BRFSS objective is to collect uniform, state specific data on preventive health practices and risk behaviors that are linked to chronic diseases, injuries, and preventable infectious diseases that affect the adult population. Factors assessed by the BRFSS include tobacco use, health care coverage, HIV/AIDS knowledge and prevention, physical activity, and fruit and vegetable consumption. Data are collected from a random sample of adults (one per household) through a telephone survey.
Diabetes Data and Trends - CDC
National, state and county data for diabetes and its complications. For obesity data, go to the map and use the links to data under the map. Estimated numbers per location are in columns to the right of the percentages, you may need to scroll sideways to see them.
CDC: Overweight and Obesity
There is a section on Data and Statistics.

Research Topic #2

Oil and the Gulf Coast Disaster Web Resources

RestoreTheGulf.gov: official federal government site for spill response and recovery

http://www.restorethegulf.gov/

Check for historical information and data, since not all is being updated.

https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/deepwater-horizon-bp-gulf-mexico-oil-spill

Air quality, water quality data and more...

https://water.usgs.gov/owq/deephorizonoilspill/ (Last updated June 21 2022)

Oil Spill Journal Articles

The Gulf Oil Spill
This article was published in The New England Journal of Medicine on April 7, 2011. It is a review article looking at the past year while also referencing other oil spills and their effects on health.
Oil Biodegradation and Biioremediation: A Tale of the Two Worst Spills in U.S. History
Published in Environmental Science & Technology, online June 23, 2011 and in print August 15, 2011.

Research Topic #3

Water Use

http://water.usgs.gov/
This is the main page for Water Resources of the US from the US Geological Survey page.
https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/wu
This is the source of the water use data for the US that we will use. You can download each year and each state separately.
http://water.usgs.gov/wsi/information.html
Follow the link to this free report (can download the summary but read the rest online): Estimating Water Use in the United States: A New Paradigm for the National Water-Use Information Program: This report presents a two-year study of the USGS National Water-Use Information Program conducted by the National Research Council at the request of the USGS.
http://water.usgs.gov/watuse/wufactsheet.html
The National Water-Use Information Program Water-Use Information for Planners, Managers, Policy Makers, Educators, and the General Public. Very good general description of the problem in the U.S.
http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/
Publications Warehouse from the USGS
https://www.usgs.gov/products/publications
Search for publications at USGS
http://www.worldwater.org/data.html
Pacific Institute: The World’s Water
Recreational Boating Impact Investigations Report
Recreational Boating Impact Investigations
Upper Mississippi River System, Pool 4
Red Wing, Minnesota
Feb 1994

Water Use Bibliography

Download a 3 page summary created by Professor D. Clark.

Water Use in the United States
Background Information, from http://water.usgs.gov/watuse/wufactsheet.html

Research Topic #4

U.S. Energy Information Administration (eia)
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) collects, analyzes, and disseminates independent and impartial energy information to promote sound policymaking, efficient markets, and public understanding of energy and its interaction with the economy and the environment.
Buildings Energy Data Book. U.S. Department of Energy
The Data Book includes statistics on residential and commercial building energy consumption. Data tables contain statistics related to construction, building technologies, energy consumption, and building characteristics.
The Building Technologies Program within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy developed this resource to provide a current and accurate set of comprehensive buildings- and energy-related data.
Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RCES) Files, All Data 2005
The Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS), which is conducted every four years, provides national statistical survey data on the use of energy in residential housing units including physical housing unit types, appliances utilized, demographics, fuels, and other energy use information. This dataset (i.e., the full RECS dataset) is very large in size and may require specialized software to open on your computer. The file might not open completely in Excel 2003 or earlier versions.
Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RCES) Files, Energy Consumption 2009
Provides national statistical survey data on the use of energy in residential housing units including physical housing unit types, appliances utilized, demographics, fuels, and other energy use information. This data set features a subset of the full RECS data set and includes data on energy consumption.

Research Topic #4

Sustainability at QU

The following link includes an up-to-date PDF report of sustainability efforts, including plans to monitor energy use at Quinnipiac:

https://www.qu.edu/about-quinnipiac/our-vision-for-the-future/sustainability/

Research Report #5

Incidence of Cancer

American Cancer Society
The Society publishes annual reports on cancer occurences. The statistics included are not raw data but the original source for the data is cited. The reports go back to 2005.
American College of Surgeons, Cancer Programs
Cancer Data for the Public
The National Cancer Data Base maintains a number of Web-based benchmarking applications that have been developed to promote access to NCDB data by the general public, researchers, and clinicians. The NCDB Public Benchmark Reports include the 11 most commonly diagnosed solid tumors in the United States. Users are provided access to data from six diagnosis years (1998–2008), slightly more than 6.5 million cases.
CDC: Cancer Prevention and Control
Basic page for CDC information on cancer.
CDC: National Program of Cancer Registries (Note "Download Data" under Options)
1999–2009 Cancer Incidence and Mortality Data
This Web-based report includes the official federal statistics on cancer incidence from registries that have high-quality data and cancer mortality statistics for each year and 2005–2009 combined. It is produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), in collaboration with the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR).
National Cancer Institute: Cancer Statistics
This site will have raw data.