Skip to content

What Sources are Appropriate?

Focus on government sources, academic articles and think tanks.

  • Whenever possible, try to track down the original source of the report.
  • It is OK to cite research, rarely do we cite people.
  • Rarely do we cite news articles, usually only to show that an event/topic was in the news, or if they truly are the original source (usually they are not, but there are some exceptions). In most cases, when you find a news site or blog post reporting on research, track down the original research.

Exploratory tools

These are some tools that staff uses to find sources. Extensive/upgraded use may require account creation

  • Litmaps
    Primarily for looking through the body of academic research on a specific topic. A tool that takes an academic paper as an input and then finds the parent and children research. You can also add additional relevant papers and it tries to identify other important papers that form a key part of the discussion.
  • SciSpace
    Primarily for doing a quick literature review. Search a topic and it will highlight some relevant papers with some quick summaries. Great tool to find opposing viewpoints if your current research is a little one-sided.

Source Ideas

This is not an exhaustive list of sources, but a list of common ones

Academic Articles

Academic articles are appropriate to use for our research, but often they are not quite as useful as hoped for. Use your university credentials to access academic databases like.

  • EBSCO
  • JSTOR
  • ProQuest
  • Google Scholar (more limited but more accessible)

If you no longer have university access, you can spend a day on campus using guest access and still get into the academic reports.

Save any non-publicly-accessible files in the project folder!

Governments

Governments are generally considered good sources of data. Particularly if it is tracking data. Governments are often less reliable in terms of analysis, but many good sources exist.

State Government Sources

  • transparency.utah.gov: All sorts of information about the state
  • State health department
    • IBIS - database of state health statistics
  • Department of Workforce Services (DWS): jobs, unemployment, labor force, etc
  • State Board of Education: Stats on k-12 schools
  • Utah System of Higher Education: Stats on higher-ed
  • Legislative Website: Authoritative site for Utah laws, legislation, legislative meetings, minutes, recordings, etc.

Local Government Sources

  • auditor.utah.gov publishes city and local government Annual Comprehensive Fiscal Reports, budgets, and auditor reports
  • Public Notice Website - Utah: Many public meetings notices, minutes, and recordings for local governments and subsidiaries.

National Government Sources

  • US Census
    They have a lot more than population data. They also have household data and economic data
    • Tools include
      • PUMS
      • data.census.gov
      • Household and Business Pulse tools
      • Onthemap tool
  • Bureau of Labor Statistics
    • Unemployment, wages, etc
  • Bureau of Economic Analysis
    • Personal Income
  • Department of Health
    • BFRSS
  • Municipal Bonds
    • EMMA

Think Tanks

Think Tanks are often more directly applicable, but we have to be careful about any potential bias or agenda.

Solid options include
  • Pew - Survey research
  • Pew Charitable Trusts - Public policy issues
  • Kaiser Family Foundation - Health and healthcare
  • Rand - Assorted public policy issues
  • National Bureau of Economic Research - Economic and workforce issues
  • US Fed Reserve Working Papers - Economic and workforce issues
  • National Conference of State Legislatures - Wide variety of public policy issues
  • Tax Foundation - Taxes
Highly Factual, but bias in content selection or political leaning
  • Brookings (Progressive)
  • Urban Institute (Liberal)
  • Cato (Libertarian)
  • American Enterprise Institute (Conservative)
  • Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (Progressive)
  • Economic Policy Institute (Liberal)
  • Center for American Progress (Progressive)

News Articles

Only if the news article is the data or is original research

Whenever possible, try to track down the original source for the reporting. 

  • When you are citing the fact that an event or topic was in the news, it is suitable to cite a newspaper/blog post
  • When a newspaper has created a dataset, or is making a proprietary dataset public, it is OK to cite the newspaper
  • Best of/Worst of/State rankings/etc. MAY be OK to cite a newspaper. Make sure you have the original source.
    Some of these will be based on propitiatory data. These are OK to cite, just make sure you explain what the data is and where it is coming from.
    Some will be an index, based on a variety of factors. These are OK to cite.  Some will be based on a single factor from the census, or some other source of public data. Avoid citing these, just track down the original data.