By Tony Greene, SAGE Online Product Associate
“All we want are the facts.”
– Sgt. Joe Friday, Dragnet
Have you ever wondered which state reports the least number of arson arrests? Have you ever been sitting alone on a Saturday night dreaming about which state has the greatest ratio of unmarried men to unmarried women? If you happen to be over 85 years old, which state are you mostly likely to reside in? And, what’s more, which state are you least likely to be caught dead in?
The answers to these questions and hundreds more can be answered on State Stats, the newest online product brought to you by SAGE and CQ Press. Now in Beta, this statistical database provides comprehensive data coverage of each state including health care, crime, education and more. In it, you will find reliable, easy-to-use data from more than eighty different sources covering more than fifteen years. When you find data you’re interested in, you can explore it using the mapping and graphing tools, compare it with other data sets, or export it to Excel. All of the data in State Stats is also available for download as spreadsheets so you can do whatever you want with it. To export data simply find what you are interested in, then go to the data series page and choose the export option above the panel. You can export the data for any year you want.
The data found in this database are gathered from the printed versions of 61 volumes of State Rankings, Health Care State Rankings, Crime State Rankings, and Education State Rankings, published annually from 1995 through 2011. These publications were basic reference books used by all types of libraries, economic development professionals, state legislative and regulatory offices, and researchers in many different fields. You can browse by state, topic, or book. You can view your data by map view, state view, line view, and table view, or compare multiple data series in a scatter plot.
So maybe you want to know more than the minimum wage rate by state. Maybe you want to compare that to average annual wages. You can do that, too. Whenever you’re looking for the facts, whatever they may be, and whether you are a grad student working on a research project or an experienced researcher authoring a book, State Stats gives you the data you need quickly and in a format that suits your needs.
Answers to questions above (based on 2009 statistics):
South Dakota reported only ten arson arrests in 2009, which represented 0.1% of all arsons reported nationally.
In Wyoming, the ratio of unmarried men to unmarried women is 136.4%
In Florida, 2.8% of the population is over 85 years old.
In Alaska, only 0.7% of the population is over 85 years old
Georgia has the lowest minimum wage rate of $5. Oregon and Washington boasts the highest at $9.
For a good factual experience, please visit http://library.cqpress.com/statestats. For any questions, Tony Greene can be reached at tony.greene@sagepub.com.
