Data Portal : City of Chicago
Find a variety of data from the City of Chicago official site.

Chicago Tribune: Data Center
Maps, applications and databases from Chicago Tribune! "The Tribune's commitment to watchdog reporting includes online resources you can use to learn more about our investigative work and how it affects you, as well as to find information yourself.

If you need municipality-level historical statistics for Chicago (or any cities), try:

• County and City Data Books 1947-2007 via HathiTrust
  • Population, industry/business, crime, vital statistics, etc.
• HUD User Datasets, circa 1970-recent
  • includes the American Housing Survey, median family incomes and income limits, as well as microdata from research initiatives on topics such as housing discrimination, the HUD-insured multifamily housing stock, and the public housing population.

Time Series Data for Chicago, 1840-1973
Numeric dataset from Prof Skogan's (NU PoliSci Dept) book, Chicago since 1840 : a time-series data handbook (also available in print - call number: L 317.7311 S628), includes a variety of historical social, economic and political data for Chicago (mostly at city level.).  Hosted by ICPSR - data download requires login using NU credentials (i.e. NetID)

Sage Campus supports the teaching and learning of skills and research methods through 280+ hours of structured online learning. The online courses are self-paced and instructor-led, comprising an engaging mix of Sage-quality content, video, interactives, and formative assessments.

NOTE: Initial access requires registration with Northwestern email address.  Registered user can access from anywhere at: https://classroom.sagepub.com

The following courses are all at the Beginner learner level unless noted otherwise.  Estimated time to complete each course is listed below however, feel free to use just those modules within a course that you find useful.

• Gather Your Data Online  | 4 hours
  • Module One: What Types of Data Collection Can I Conduct Online?
  • Module Two: How do I Choose the Online Data Collection That Fits My Research?
  • Module Three: How Can I Find and Get Permission to Use Data That Exists Online?
  • Module Four: How Can I Find and Gain Consent From Participants Online?
  • Module Five: How Can I Interact With Participants Online?
  • Module Six: How Do I Prepare to Start My Online Research?
• Cleaning Messy Data  | 3 hours
  • Module One: Help! My Data Are Messy
  • Module Two: Why Clean Messy Data?
  • Module Three: How Can I Clean My Messy Data?

• Know Your Numbers  |  5 hours
  • Module One: Fluency With Numbers Makes Tasks Easier
  • Module Two: Making Sense of Fractions
  • Module Three: Seven Rules for Handling Fractions
  • Module Four: Making Sense of Tables
  • Module Five: Using Rows and Columns to Make Comparisons
  • Module Six: Rounding Numbers
  • Module Seven: Percentages and Ratios Help Make Clear Comparisons
• See Numbers in Data  |  5 hours
  • Module One: Why Is Most Data Numerical?
  • Module Two: What Is the Average, Level, or Central Tendency of Data?
  • Module Three: What Is the Spread or Dispersion of Data?
  • Module Four: How Do I Understand the Data in Pie Charts, Bar Charts, and Histograms?
  • Module Five: How Do I Understand the Data in Box Plots, Line Graphs, and Scatterplots?
  • Module Six: How Do I Understand the Data in a Graph?
  • Module Seven: How Can I Use and Interpret Numbers in Data Well?
• Statistical Significance  | 4 hours
  • Module One: What Is Statistical Significance?
  • Module Two: Variables and Their Distributions
  • Module Three: How Does a Random Sample Work?
  • Module Four: What Is a Standard Error?
  • Module Five: How Do I Calculate Confidence Intervals With Standard Errors?
  • Module Six: Testing a Null Hypothesis
  • Module Seven: What Does a Significant P-Value Actually Mean?