Review Essay: We Need More Data

We constructed this dataset to assess the prevalence of articles using variable-based individual-level survey data in leading sociology journals. We reviewed 3,495 articles published between 1999 and 2024 in American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, and American Sociological Review. From this corpus, we identified 1,204 original research articles that utilized large-scale survey data as the primary source of analysis. For each article, we recorded the author(s), publication year, volume, title, abstract, journal, and data source. We excluded book reviews, comments, and other non-research content. We then coded each of the 1,204 articles according to the main type of evidence it produced. Two researchers conducted the coding independently, following a shared protocol. In cases of disagreement (N = 106), a third independent coder adjudicated, and the final categorization was determined by two-thirds agreement. For a subset of articles (n = 30) with unresolved disagreement or flagged for further discussion, all coders met to reach consensus. These data were used to produce Figures 1 and 2 in the American Journal of Sociology “Review Essay: We Need More Data.”