There are a wide variety of secondary data sources freely available online that could be used as the basis for a social/cultural geographical dissertation study. Check out the sources listed below for ideas.
National archives are searchable in a variety of ways. For example the UK Data Service is the UK’s largest collection of social, economic and population research data:
https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/ can be reviewed by theme: https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/get-data/themes.aspx. You can also browse by type of data such as: quantitative and qualitative data collections.
IPUMs provides census and survey data from around the world. It’s possible to study change, conduct comparative research, and analyse individuals within family and community contexts.
A wide range of data sources and documents are available from government departments, for example, care, disability, citizenship and living in the UK, housing and local services, parenting, education, environment and the countryside.
Other sources to explore:
- UK Data Archive
- Text Encoding Initiative
- The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA)
- QualiBank
- Horizon 2020
- Qualitative Data Repository
- Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS)
- Irish Qualitative Data Archive
- Pew Research Center: Religion and Public Life
- Big Qual Analysis Resource Hub
- Qualitative Data Repository (QDR)
- Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study
- Census and Administrative Data Longitudinal Studies Hub
- Centre for Longitudinal Studies
- Closer
- British Social Attitudes Survey
- Inventing Adulthoods – A qualitative longitudinal dataset on young people growing up in England and Northern Ireland