CAFF Consumer Affairs Course Guides & Subject Guide

CAFF 422 Housing Policies

Find Statistics and Public Opionion

Simple strategy for finding government statistics:

Go to Google--Type: statistics [topic] site:.gov

Other sources of statistics 

Census for demographics

Try these databases

Start with OneSearch

1. Start with OneSearch on the Library home page.
2. Create a search with your specific housing issue (e.g. affordability, quality, homelessness, etc.), but keep the first search broad to get a feel for the more specific topics covered in the literature. Remember to use synonyms for your keywords.
3. Filter the results using the SUBJECT filter on the left. This will give you a sense of what housing topics are covered in the literature. 
4. Filter by publication date, but go broader than the date range your professor asks for. For example, if the professor wants research within the past 10 years, make it 15. That way, if you find a perfect article that is 11 years old, you can make a case for it with the professor.
5. Example
   1. In OneSearch try: housing AND (policy OR law). This yields about 2.3 million results. 
   2. Now use the SUBJECT filter. If I choose the Subjects community development, housing policy and housing policy United States, this reduces the results to about 23,000 results that are About those subjects, not just results that mention the search terms.
   3. Next, I use the Publication Date filter to narrow the results to the last 20 years, if that's an appropriate time period for my topic. That reduces the results to about 15,000.
6. Now it's time to look at the results to see if they are on target. If not, consider changing your search terms.
7. You can also filter for Peer-Reviewed journals, if that is what your professor wants.

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