The World Wide Web has become a cornucopia of existing statistics for social researchers.  For example, here are just a few government agencies you can explore to gain an appreciation of the data literally at your finger tips.  Perhaps some of these data sources could be useful to you in doing research for a term paper in some other course.
 
 

Bureau of the Census	http://www.census.gov/
Bureau of Labor Statistics	http://stats.bls.gov/
Bureau of Transportation Statistics	http://www.bts.gov/
Centers for Disease Control	http://www.cdc.gov/
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)	http://www.cia.gov/
Department of Education	http://www.ed.gov/
Environmental Protection Agency	http://www.epa.gov/
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)	http://www.fbi.gov/
House of Representatives	http://www.house.gov/
National Center for Educational Statistics	http://www.ed.gov/NCES
National Institutes of Health	http://www.nih.gov/
White House	http://www.whitehouse.gov/
State and Local Governments	http://www.piperinfo.com/~piper/state/states.html