Policy Reports and Polling
- Policy Commons and North American City ReportsSearch millions of documents on thousands of topics from the world’s leading policy experts, nonpartisan think tanks, IGOs and NGOs as well as from North American cities. Featured topics include Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, Climate Change, Gender Equity, and reports from the 500 largest cities in North America.
- IssueLab"IssueLab's mission is to more effectively archive, distribute, and promote the extensive and diverse body of research being produced by the nonprofit sector."
- Congressional Research Service (CRS) ReportsCRS reports provide Congress with both anticipatory and on-demand research and analysis to support their legislative, oversight, and representational duties. All reports adhere to the core values of CRS; they are authoritative, objective and nonpartisan. Reports range in length from several pages to more than one-hundred pages and cover the full breadth of topics of interest to Congress. Currently, only the last year of reports is available freely through this website. See ProQuest Congressional below for full coverage of CRS reports.
- Gallup Analytics This link opens in a new windowGallup Analytics provides trends in public opinion polling, using Gallup US Daily Poll questions and Gallup World Poll questions . Output formats include tables for time-series trends, charts and scatterplots, and maps for individual poll question responses. Questions in the World Poll vary by year and country. Gallup has a tool for identifying questions and when they were asked in a country. The subscription to Gallup Analytics includes mediated access to Gallup poll data for the US Daily Poll and World Poll. Contact library staff at busref@umn.edu for more information.
- iPoll (Roper Center for Public Opinion Research) This link opens in a new windowiPOLL is a collection of polling sources from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. It includes surveys from 150 polling organizations that include all major news outlets, Gallup polls, and other research institutions. Use these polls to compare public opinion from 1935-present on a range of issues.
Legal & Regulatory
- VitalLaw (formerly CCH Cheetah) This link opens in a new windowVitalLaw includes full-text primary sources of law with commentary, a variety of CCH and Aspen legal publications, smart charts, practical tools, news, webinars, white papers, and blogs. Practice areas covered include corporate & securities, labor & employment, intellectual property, healthcare, human resources, intellectual property and tax.
examples from CCH HR Compliance Library:
¶40,810, Overview: Issues concerning arrested/incarcerated workers HR Compliance Library,
¶40,812, How should you deal with an employee who has been arrested? HR Compliance Library,
¶40,815, Examples: Arbitration decisions concerning arrested/incarcerated workers HR Compliance Library,
¶40,831, What should you do if one of your employees gets arrested?
- Bloomberg ProfessionalNews and analytics for over 129 countries and 250 exchanges for the financial services industry. Offerings include 24-hour historical and 15-minute delayed securities pricing, news, data, and analysis on companies, markets and economies. Access is only available from terminals in Wilson or Walter libraries. See details below.
Bloomberg Professional desktop is available in Wilson Library (West Bank Campus), and laptops in Walter Library (for use in the Toaster). See access instructions below.
Using Bloomberg Professional in Wilson Library. Direct specific questions to the Libraries business specialists: busref@umn.edu.
Using Bloomberg Professional laptops in Walter Library (for use in the Toaster) - HeinOnline This link opens in a new windowHuge legal search tool with full-text of legal journals, legal histories, government documents, state and federal cases, international law and includes coverage of many older legal materials. Contains the Congressional Record, Federal Register, and Code of Federal Regulations, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports (Supreme Court) back to 1754.
- WestlawNext Campus Research (Law)WestlawNext Campus Research provides access to legal materials, including cases, statutes, and regulations of the U.S. government and the various state governments. It includes law journals, the American Jurisprudence encyclopedia, the American Law Reports, and news content.
- National Conference of State LegislatorsNews, current events, information and analysis to support state legislatures. Bipartisan research on important public policy issues facing state governments.
See, for example laws from all 50 states:
Calculating Absenteeism Costs, prepared by Return to Work
- PluralFollow existing and introduced federal and state legislation across the country or in your state. Plural streamlines how you discover, track, and organize the bills you care about. The platform allows individuals and teams to see what’s happening with similar legislation across the country, find out where bill language reappears over time, and even predict which bills are starting to gain momentum.
Statistical Sources
Bureau of Labor Statistics
A few examples:
BLS absenteeism
https://www.bls.gov/cps/
Employment cost trends
https://www.bls.gov/ncs/ect/
Data on absences from work
https://www.bls.gov/cps/
Annual total separations rate by industry and region (total turnover)
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t16.htm
- Statistical Insight This link opens in a new windowSearch statistical publications from US and state government agencies, international intergovernmental organizations, professional and trade organizations, business organizations, commercial publishers, independent research organizations, and universities.
News & Research Articles
- Business Source PremierFind business articles from journals and magazines in marketing, management, information technology, operations, human resources, accounting, finance and economics dating back to 1965.
- Web of ScienceA comprehensive interdisciplinary collection of journal article citations. Subjects generally covered are within science and technology, arts and humanities, and social sciences. View this tutorial to learn how to go from a general idea to a very precise set of results of journal articles and scholarly materials.
- Worldwide Political Science AbstractsThe database provides citations, abstracts, and indexing of the international serials literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration & public policy from1975 to the present.
- Sociological AbstractsThis core database for the field of sociology contains information on sociology and social policy worldwide. Sociological Abstracts includes citations from the 1952-present. It provides abstracting and indexing of articles and book reviews drawn from thousands of journal publications, plus books, book chapters, dissertations, conference papers, and working papers.
- EconLitContains bibliographic citations and selected abstracts to the professional and scholarly literature in the field of economics and allied disciplines.
- Criminal Justice DatabaseCriminal Justice Database supports research on crime, its causes and impacts, legal and social implications, as well as litigation and crime trends. It includes U.S. and international scholarly journals, and correctional and law enforcement trade publications, dissertations, crime reports, crime blogs and other material relevant for researchers or those preparing for careers in criminal justice, law enforcement and related fields.
- PubMedSearches MEDLINE, which is the primary source of journal articles for the health sciences (fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, public health, health care systems, and basic sciences). Coverage is from the 1940s to the present. View this tutorial to learn how to go from a general idea to a very precise set of results of journal articles and scholarly materials.
UMN Faculty & Related Research
Professor Joe Soss, Humphrey School. A recent article of possible interest: Page, J., Soss, J. & Piehowski, V. (2019). “A Debt of Care: Commercial Bail and the Gendered Logic of Criminal Justice Predation.”, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences., 5(1), 150–72.