Subject Expert
Office: JFK Library, U02C
Email: imiller@ewu.edu
Text or phone: 509.818.0559
Meet with Me (Office Hours):Wednesdays & Thursdays 3-5pm or by appointment, in person or via zoom.
Use the Schedule Research Consultation button above, for Mon-Fri 9-6pm. If you need to meet during the evening or weekend, please email me.
Population/Demographic Resources
When creating your user profiles, it would help to research EWU students and faculty. How old are most EWU students? How many students fall into particular categories? What is their background? What are they majoring in?
- Some institutions do collect and share demographic data, such as EWU and our students.
- Federal, state and local government agencies collect and share demographic data down to the city level, so you can find out about Spokane City or Spokane County.
EWU
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EWU Office of Institutional Research Annual Fall Enrollment DashboardThe Institutional Research office collects data about EWU students.
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EWU Common Data SetsLinks to publically available data on students and faculty
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EWU Employee DemographicsDashboard in Human Resources, but doesn't dig down deeper than "faculty."
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EWU Fast FactsWebsite has demographic data for the current academic year. Scroll down to find a link to a 2-page infographic version of the data.
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Easterner EWU Student NewspaperPerhaps the student newspaper did an article about X student group?
Local & Regional
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OSPI Report CardData that the WA Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction collects. Can look by school district or across the state. Look for "Dual Credit" for both Running Start & College in the High School
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Spokane TrendsPortal to data for Spokane County. A joint project of: City of Spokane, Community Building Foundation, Eastern Washington University, Greater Spokane Inc., Spokane Regional Health District, and Spokane United Way.
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Census ReporterA "Knight News Challenge-funded project to make it easier for journalists to write stories using information from the U.S. Census bureau. Place profiles and comparison pages provide a friendly interface for navigating data, including visualizations." If you've ever tried using the Census Bureau's American Factfinder, this is heavenly.
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Washington State Office of Financial Management County & City DataPortal to data for each county in Washington State, including demographics, economics, and human services.
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State & County (& City) QuickFactsQuick tables on population, age/race, income, housing, income/poverty, disability and health insurance for towns with at least 5,000 people. From the Census Bureau.
When the Census Bureau contacts everyone for the decennial census, or when they sample in between decennial censuses, they are tracking where the person resides at that moment. So Cheney data will reflect students living on campus and in town, vs their hometown. But the 2020 Census data will be an outlier, since it was where you were living on April 1st, and a large number of students living on campus or in Cheney went home after winter quarter!
National Level Resources
Full Text Reports
Below are collections of user surveys and (mainly) national-level statistics.
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Pew Research on Internet & TechnologyNonpartisan organization that conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research on issues of importance nationally and internationally. Their reports get lots of media attention and are widely cited. Browse or keywords search their reports and data sets.
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SAGE Data This link opens in a new windowCollection of data measures spanning all U.S. states, counties, cities, metropolitan areas, and zip codes, AND allows you to turn the data into visual representations. Covers the economy, education, crime, government finance, health, population, religion, social welfare, and transportation.
Articles Discussing User Trends???
Many organizations do study users, but they don't share their findings for free. Magazine and newspaper articles may report on such studies and give you enough information, or academics may write up their research on user behavior.